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WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM? 



BY THE BISHOP OF SPKINGFIELD. 



Some Considerations Showing Why the 
Name of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
Should be Changed. A paper read at the 
Church Congress held in Louisville, 1887. 
Published by The Young Churchman Co., 
Milwaukee. Price ten cents. 




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What is Modern Romanism? 



A Consideration of such Portions of Holy Scripture, 

as have Alleged Bearings on the Claims 

of Modern Rome. 



GEORGE FRANKLIN SEYMOUR, D,D, LL.D. 

Bisliop of Springfield. 




MIL! 

The Young Churchman Company. 




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^53 6 



COPYRIGHT 1888, 
By The Young Churchman Co. 



press OP 
King, Fowle & Co., 

MILWAUKEE. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Preface, - 7 

Charts, 8-11 

I. The Polity of Rome, 15 

II. The Church of the Gospel, 17 

III. The Mission to all the Apostles Alike, 22 

IV. Papal Infallibility, 28 

Y. Was S. Peter the Supreme Head ? - - 36 

YI. Rome ys. the Bible, 45 

VII. "Upon this Rock," 49 

VIII. Development, and the Power of the Keys, 56 

IX. "Feed My Sheep," 64 

X. The Equality of the Apostles, 70 

XI. Development, or Revolution ? - 76 

XII. Papal Supremacy, - 83 

XIII. S. Peter and Leo XIII., 90 

XIV. The Head of the Church, - 97 
XV. tfo Modern Romanism in the Acts or 

Epistles, 104 

XVI. The Epistle to the Romans and the 

Epistles of S. Peter, 113 

XVII. 8. John no Modern Romanist, 123 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The design of these letters, or chapters, on Modern Roman- 
ism, is clearly stated in the first of the series. 

The undertaking was not spontaneous ; it was pressed upon 
the writer by others, as a work which was greatly needed at 
the present time, and one, which, if well done, would be product- 
ive of great and permanent benefit. Upon this point, the 
ability and skill displayed in the treatment of the subject 
others must decide, but the writer must urge that the argu- 
ment is not complete, since the testimony of the sub-apostolic 
and primitive Church must be produced as interpreting and 
applying Holy Scripture, in order to dismiss, absolutely and for- 
ever, the claim that the polity of Modern Romanism has any 
ground whatever to rest upon, either in God's Word, or the 
earliest ages of Christianity. 

If the present attempt should be appreciated as deserving 
encouragement, the author may, if he can find the time, carry 
on the discussion through the first seven centuries of our era. 

In conclusion, the writer desires to say that he has not inten- 
tionally written a word that would give needless pain to any 
who may honor his pages with a perusal. 

G. F. 8. 

August 16th, 1888. 



WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 




THE DISCONNECTED LINKS IN THE CHAIN OF 
THE PAPAL SUCCESSION. 



WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM ? 




10 



WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM 




WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM 



11 




CHAPTER I. 



THE POLITY OF ROME. 



TT7HAT is Modern Romanism? Unless one is able to 
VV answer this question clearly and distinctly, he is 
liable to fall a victim to the grossest imposition. The 
emissaries of this system are active and zealous, and 
should no warning be given or antidote provided, there is 
imminent danger that the unwary, who are unable to in- 
vestigate for themselves, may, in their innocence, be misled. 
We write with a view to put such persons on their guard 
and furnish a few tests, which will enable them to distin- 
guish the counterfeit from the true Catholicity. We pro- 
pose to deal with the subject in such a way as to put it in 
the power of any one to investigate the matter for himself, 
without recourse to an apparatus of books, and the instru- 
mentality of foreign tongues, so that the reader of these 
chapters may, after their perusal, lean back in his chair, 
and say to himself, "Well, I have grasped a principle 
which I understand, I have discerned a test which I can 
myself apply, I am in possession of facts which cannot be 
gainsaid ; in a word, I feel that I am being equipped with 
armor which I can use, myself, against all comers, I am 
being supplied with arguments which will enable me to 
protect myself against sophistry, be it employed by whom 
it may." 

We begin then with the polity, or Church government, 



14 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

of Rome, and we ask the questions, What is it? What are 
its principles ? Is it the same now that it always was, or 
has it undergone a change? 

The Church polity of Rome as the Roman theologians 
teach, may be described, in political language, as an abso- 
lute, unlimited monarchy. The Pope is an autocrat ; he 
is the head, not as a chairman is head of a gathering of 
citizens, or a President is in charge of a bank, or a Bishop 
exercises jurisdiction over a Diocese ; but he is by divine 
appointment the head of the Church, he is Christ's image 
on earth, he is in the place of Christ as no one else is or 
can be, he is above all and controls all, and is controlled 
by none. Do what he may, he is beyond man's judgment, 
and when he speaks authoritatively or officially, God the 
Holy Ghost prevents him from going wrong ; he is in- 
fallible. 

The Papacy, therefore, in the literal meaning of the term, 
is an "absolute, unlimited monarchy," and is ruled by a 
monarch whom God lifts up above his fellows and puts in 
the place of His Son. He is at once the Vicar of Christ 
and the mouth of the Church; so that when he acts, Christ 
acts, and when he speaks, the Church speaks. His empire 
is the entire earth, the whole world, as we say. His juris- 
diction reaches from pole to pole, and from the rising to 
the setting sun. All ecclesiastics, be they Cardinals, Arch- 
bishops, Bishops or Deacons, are merely his deputies, his 
agents, receiving mission and j urisdiction from him . With- 
out him, no one of them would have any legal authority 
to act or speak, or perform any ministerial function. If it 
were possible, which of course it is not, he would person- 
ally exercise his jurisdiction by himself ; but as he cannot 



THE POLITY OF ROME. 15 

be everywhere at the same time, he must needs employ 
subordinates to do his bidding and act in his name. 

If, for instance, any diocese becomes vacant, the Pope 
alone can fill the vacancy. The method adopted makes 
this perfectly clear. The local Church does not select the 
successor, but usually submits three names to the Bishop 
of Rome, as suggestions of persons whom they would wel- 
come as a Bishop in the place of the one deceased. The 
Pope may, if he so choose, select one of the parties so nom- 
inated, or he may pass them over and choose an entirely 
different person. In any case, the appointment is, as it is 
claimed, vested in him by divine right, and he accordingly 
fills the vacancy, and consecrates the new prelate, either 
directly by his own hand, or by commission through the 
hands of others deputed by him to perform the consecra- 
tion. All priests and minor ecclesiastics receive, in the 
theory of modern Rome, their mission from the Pope, and 
only thus by his authority can they, in any part of the 
earth, exercise their respective ministries. Everything in 
the Church of Rome, be it what it may, Bishop, Priest, 
Deacon, Sacrament, confession, absolution, penance, 
depends upon the Pope. Imagine in civil affairs that there 
was but one monarch who ruled the entire earth, including 
the islands of the sea, without intervention of any legisla- 
ture of any kind, except he chose to convene an assembly 
to record his will, and carry out his plans, and you have 
before you a picture of the papacy as it exists to-day. 

This civil monarch, call him what you please, must 
necessarily have viceroys or lieutenants or deputies to rep- 
resent him in the different countries, but the power and 
administration in every case would be as much his, as if he 



16 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

were present in person. In the case of the supposed civil 
ruler, however, his administration might be interrupted 
and his authority overthrown, or at least curtailed, by 
revolution, and a new government distributed among sev- 
eral; or many monarchs might succeed; but in the case of 
the polity of Modern Rome, this is impossible, since it 
is claimed that the Pope is what he is, the sole and abso- 
lute ruler of the whole earth, by divine appointment, and 
holds and exercises this supreme and unlimited control as 
the successor of S. Peter, who was in his day what the 
present Pope is in our day. 

Consequently Modern Romanism is responsible for 
claiming that this system which we have endeavored to 
sketch, is of God and is clearly revealed by Him in Holy 
Scripture, and was carried out in all its essential principles 
from the very first ; so that if we compare the Romanism 
of to-day with the Church polity as exhibited in Holy 
Scripture, or in the time of S. Ignatius, or S. Polycarp, or 
S. Cyprian, or S. Augustine, or S. Chrysostom, or in any 
subsequent age, it will correspond precisely and accurately, 
so that it will be seen to be as it must necessarily be, if it 
is God's plan, mapped out by Himself, the same from the 
very first and in all the ages all along. 

We will now make the comparison and bring Modern 
Romanism face to face with Church polity as presented 
by Scripture, and as far as space will permit, in the first 
thousand years of Christianity. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE CHURCH OF THE GOSPEL. 



IN our last chapter we answered the question, What is 
Modern Romanism, in so far as to sketch its polity. 
We saw that it is an absolute monarchy, with the Pope at 
its head. To recapitulate : The Pope is, as Modern Ro- 
manism holds, an order by himself. He is sui generis, 
there is no one like him as to power and office. He is 
above all. He rules all, and can be controlled by no one. 
The collective Episcopate is completely the creature of 
his will. It can have no mind or opinion of its own. It 
has been sunk from an independent order in the Church 
of God, to be a mere grade of the Priesthood. Moreover, 
it is a local polity, having its home in one city, which 
gives its name as a title to the Church. Modern Roman- 
ism calls itself, the Holy Roman Church ; and so it dis- 
poses, itself, of its claim to Catholicity. That which is 
local in the centre and sweep of its jurisdiction on the 
earth, cannot be in the true sense of the term, Universal 
or Catholic. 

Keeping this fundamental idea of the polity of Modern 
Rome clearly in mind, let us test its truth as established 
by God, by comparing it with the Church as presented to 
us in the pages of Revelation, as an existing reality. on the 
earth in the days of the Apostles and their associates ; and 



18 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

subsequently when we leave the pages of Revelation, as 
existing in the first thousand years of the Christian era. 

Before we institute the comparison suggested, let us 
briefly inquire as to at least one of the great purposes 
which God designed to accomplish, in giving us the Holy 
Scriptures. We are at present, of course, concerned simply 
with the New Testament. The subject matter of the 
New Testament falls under three heads : Historical, 
directly or indirectly; Dogmatic, and Prophetical. 
The History is, of course, Divine in its origin and execu- 
tion, and so, free from human imperfection. The Dogma 
is absolutely true. The Prophecy is sure and certain. 
One grand purpose which God had in view, in giving us 
these writings was to furnish us a chart of fundamental 
principles, rooted in Christ Himself, Whose life the four 
Evangelists sketch; exemplified and practically carried 
out under the direction of Christ's own chosen master- 
builders, the inspired Apostles, during the first seventy 
years of the history of the Church Militant here on earth, 
and fulfilled in absolute perfection in the Church Triumph- 
ant, as seen by S. John the Divine in the visions of the 
Apocalypse. 

We thus have in the New Testament a statement by 
Christ Himself of the essential principles which were to 
characterize His Kingdom on earth, the Christian Church 
when it was established, as it was shortly to be, by the 
power and operation of the Holy Ghost. We have those 
principles practically acted upon and applied by the Apos- 
tles in carrying out their Master's will in administering 
His Church, when it became an existing reality on and 
after the day of Pentecost ; and we see the Divine Head of 



THE CHURCH OF THE GOSPEL. 19 

the Church recognizing these principles, and making them 
the rule of His government and administration of the 
Church Triumphant in Heaven. The Gospels show us 
what the principles of the coming Kingdom were to be. 
The Acts of the Holy Apostles directly, and their Epistles 
incidentally, show us that those same principles were 
applied and carried out, practically, in the first years of 
the life of the Church on earth, and the "Revelation of S. 
John shows us in prophecy that the same principles will 
be observed in the government and administration of the 
Church throughout the ages of eternity. With this view 
as to one of the great purposes of the New Testament Script- 
ures, let us bring the polity of the Holy Roman Church 
as now held and taught "of faith," face to face with the 
Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles and the Revelation of S. 
John, and see whether it can bear the test of the com- 
parison. 

In the Gospels, our Lord speaks of His Kingdom as a 
thing about to be. He declares that His Kingdom is near 
at hand, that He will establish it, that His Apostles shall 
sit upon thrones, and shall eat and drink in His Kingdom. 
During His earthly ministry, He called to Himself from 
their various occupations, twelve men, whom he kept with 
Him from the day of tlis Baptism until His Ascension 
into Heaven. These He instructed by precept and exam- 
ple. To them He gave commission to do, in the future, 
certain things, and exercise certain offices. He trained 
them for their future vocation as only God the Son could, 
and prepared them to be witnesses of the supreme event 
in His Incarnation, namely, His Resurrection from the Dead. 
On His Resurrection from the dead He staked His charac- 



20 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM $ 

ter as the Prophet, Priest and King, the only Begotten of 
the Father, the Messiah, the Saviour of mankind. In 
due course of time He was put to death, and the third 
day He rose again, according to the Scriptures. And dur- 
ing forty days He remained on earth in order to give the 
Apostles and others, many infallible proofs of His Resur- 
rection. 

At the expiration of those great forty days, during which 
the Lord of life, in His supernatural human nature (for 
now His humanity has passed through the grave and gate 
of death), remained on earth, He gathered round Him 
His disciples, and gave them the plenary charter of mis- 
sion and jurisdiction to act in His stead, pledging Himself 
to be with them until the end of the world. This commis- 
sion thus given as the last act of our Lord while visibly 
present on the earth, is the summing up and gathering 
together of all the points in the separate directions and 
commands which He had given them from time to time 
during His ministry, and subsequently to His Resurrec- 
tion, when He was speaking to them, as related in the 
Acts, "of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." 
This plenary commission is expressed in the following 
words, which will be found in the twenty-eighth chapter 
of S. Matthew, nineteenth and twentieth verses : "Go ye, 
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you ; and lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world. Amen." 

This commission was addressed to the eleven Apostles 
and not to one, and consequently here is a discrepancy 



THE CHURCH OF THE GOSPEL. 21 

which is absolutely fatal to the theory of Church govern- 
ment as presented in the polity of Modern Rome. To 
satisfy the conditions of that system it would have been 
necessary for our Lord to speak primarily and solely to S. 
Peter, and bid him dispense at his will and pleasure such 
mission and jurisdiction as he might be pleased to impart, 
not to his fellow Apostles, but, to his inferiors, in order 
and degree beneath, and entirely subordinate to, himself. 

In the Gospel narrative our Lord is presented to us as 
the one fountain of power and grace on earth. " All power 
is given unto Me," saith He, " in heaven and in earth. 
Go 3^e therefore," etc. And He wills that that power and 
grace shall flow forth originally in eleven separate chan- 
nels, to be diffused in due time through those streams, 
prolonged and subdivided and multiplied in inferior min- 
istries throughout the entire earth, and to the end of time, 
so that in every case, be it when or where it may, one may 
trace the minutest rivulet of power and grace in any hu- 
man heart and life, back to the larger stream, and back to 
some one of the Apostolic channels, and thence to the 
original fountain source, our Risen Lord, standing on the 
Mount of Ascension, exercising His sovereignty, just be- 
fore He went up on high to seat Himself by absolute 
right upon the throne of God. 

What we mean to assert is this : That the grace of 
Holy Orders was given and distributed by Christ to the 
eleven Apostles, and was not given by Christ to S. Peter, 
and by S. Peter distributed to the ten Apostles; and until 
this can be shown to have been the case, Modern Roman- 
ism in its polity, is utterly and absolutely out of joint 
with our Blessed Lord's original charter of the Ministry, 
as given on the Mount of Ascension. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE MISSION TO ALL THE APOSTLES ALIKE. 



WE have now brought Modern Romanism — an absolute 
monarchy, with the Pope in the place of Christ, 
claiming to inherit this position from S. Peter — face to 
face with the risen Lord giving His final and plenary com- 
mission to His Apostles, probably within the very hour 
when He ascended into Heaven; and we have seen that 
the modern counterfeit and the original draught not only 
do not agree, but are hopelessly irreconcilable with each 
other. S. Peter does not occupy the pkce which is now 
held by the Bishop of Rome, he is not put before his 
brother Apostles, he is not above them, he is not nearer to 
his Divine Master, he is not addressed separately, and set 
over the rest, and directed to make known as his will and 
pleasure what he has himself first received, and to give mis- 
sion and jurisdiction to them in such time and manner as 
he may see fit. On the contrary the Sovereign Head of 
the Church addresses all alike and says, " Go ye therefore, 
* * and lo ! I am with you " — not thee in the singular, 
but you in the plural — " even unto the end of the world." 
If S. Peter had been assigned by our Lord the place which 
the Pope claims to-day by divine right as his successor, he 
would have been withdrawn from his fellow Apostles to the 
top of the mountain, and alone with the Saviour, while 
they would have been far removed, beneath, out of hearing 



THE MISSION TO ALL THE APOSTLES ALIKE. 23 

if not out of sight, and the Master's words would not have 
been, " Go ye, teach ye, baptize ye, and lo ! I am with you 
all," but as He embraced S. Peter and made him by that 
embrace as nearly as outward act can, one with Himself, 
the words would have been, " Go thou, baptize thou, and 
lo ! I am with thee, even unto the end of the world." 

The record given by S. Matthew is the charter of the 
Church of Christ ; it embodies the fundamental principles 
of its government as formulated and proclaimed by the 
Lord Himself. 

Modern Romanism has substituted another charter for 
this ; it has revolutionized the original and divinely 
constituted government, and in place of the Apostles 
bearing rale as the vicars of the one great Shepherd and 
Bishop of our souls, it presents the Pope as the one vicar 
of Christ, as the head of the Church, as inheriting 
personally all the promises which are given in Holy 
Scripture to the Church in its organic capacity, 
so that he lays hold of our Saviour's words, pledging 
himself that the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against his Church, and claims for himself, and asserts in 
consequence, that he is, in the sphere of faith and morals, 
" infallible, " that is, that the gates of hell can never prevail 
against him. 

No theory of development will explain the change which 
has taken place from the Apostolic, primitive and Catho- 
lic polity of the Church, resting upon the divine charter 
given by her great Head just before He seated Himself, in 
our nature, as invested with all power in Heaven and in 
earth, on the throne of God — no theory of development, 
we say, will explain the change from the original govern- 



24 WHAT IS MODERN R03IANI8M % 

ment instituted by Christ in person, to the Papacy as it 
now exists. Revolution, usurpation, substitution, come 
between — not development. The change is not such as 
comes from growth when the child becomes a man, but 
such as happens when Csesar strangles the republic and 
reigns supreme. The Pope, alleging that he occupies S. 
Peter's place, and exercises S. Peter's prerogatives, has put 
his foot upon the neck of the Episcopate of his own com- 
munion, and bent it to his will, so that it has lost its inde- 
pendence, and to Roman theology, has ceased to be an 
order of the sacred ministry, and survives simply as a 
grade of the Priesthood. 

This did not S. Peter. He was, it is true, generally first 
in action and in administration, but the New Testament 
and primitive tradition never represent him as superseding 
them, ruling them, acting without reference to them, as 
independent of them, much less in opposition to them, 
except when his old habit returned and he was guilty of 
dissimulation, and was deservedly rebuked with sharpness 
for his fault. 

The Apostles, of whom S. Peter was one, exercise under 
Christ supreme authority. They send S. Peter and S. 
John on an errand. They receive a report from S. Peter 
of his labors, and of his reasons for doing as he did. They 
sit in a joint assembly and S. Peter with them, under the 
presidency, or chairmanship, of S. James, and the resolve 
of the council is proclaimed and published, not in the 
name of S. Peter, nor by S. Peter, but as the determina- 
tion of the Apostolic body acting under the guidance of 
the Holy Ghost. A younger Apostle, as one born out of 
due time, enters the ministry by the direct call of the 



THE MISSION TO ALL THE APOSTLES ALIKE. 25 

Ascended Jesus, speaking from Heaven, and he, as taking 
office when the Church has been, so to speak, for some 
time in working order, must illustrate in the most em- 
phatic way by his relation to S. Peter, whether it was 
God's will that S. Peter should be the head of the Church, 
the absolute ruler of the Body of Christ on earth. So far 
from this, while the Book of the Acts and the Epistles of 
S. Paul and S. Peter remain, and are allowed to be a part 
of the inspired Scriptures, it will be impossible, utterly 
impossible, to make good for S. Peter the claim that he 
held a place of supremacy over the Apostles. Nay, S. 
Paul's life and labors, as related by the divine penmen, 
form, as we shall hereafter see, a refutation which amounts 
to a demonstration adverse to the Petrine prerogatives, as 
asserted by modern Roman theologians. 

The supremacy and infallibility of the Pope, as articles 
of the creed required to be believed by all members of the 
Holy Roman Church at the present day, and the polity 
which they represent, can be readily accounted for as one 
reads ecclesiastical history, but not on the theory of 
development. The} 7 are the product of circumstances, 
overruled, doubtless, by God's hand, but arising, combin- 
ing, progressing, receding, changing, as we say, in the 
course of human affairs, and bringing about results which 
are sufficiently explained by the agency of man. The 
polity of the Church of Rome — as it presents itself to the 
world to-day ; the perfection, almost, of organization, 
under the dominion of one man who claims to be more 
than man, in the place of God, representing God on a 
vastly loftier plane than any other creature does or can, 
receiving directly alone of the sons of men sacramental 



26 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM ? 

grace for the human family, and dispensing it at his will 
to his subordinates throughout the entire earth — this won- 
derful phenomenon is no more the development of Church 
growth advancing under the operation of spiritual laws, 
directly stated or implied in Holy Scripture, than the 
monster painted by Horace in his Art of Poetry is or 
could be the product of nature. God created His Church? 
He framed its constitution, He appointed its officers, He 
instituted its Sacraments, He, in a very special and excep- 
tional way, attested by miracles, superintended its birth 
and organization ; and then, when it had gone abroad 
from its home throughout the world and made itself a 
local habitation in every region and under all conditions 
of human society and life, He closed the book of records 
which He moved men to make, and guarded them from 
error in making, up to this time, and left it as His testi- 
mony, certified with His own hand and sealed with His 
own signet, as to the polity of His Church, not only in 
theory but in fact, not in one place and for a single year, 
but in every place and for at least two generations. This 
testimony is ample as to the character and fundamental 
principles of the government which He arranged for His 
Church, and under which He willed her to live and grow 
to the end of time ; and this testimony, given by Almighty 
God Himself, forever excludes the absolute unlimited 
monarchy of the Papacy from being His creation, or exist- 
ing in accordance with His will. They cannot both be 
true. Accept the polity of Rome, as now held and prac- 
ticed, as the divinely appointed form of Church govern- 
ment, and you must, on logical principles, dismiss a con- 
siderable portion of the New Testament as untrustworthy. 



THE MISSION TO ALL THE APOSTLES ALIKE. 27 

On the other hand, if you receive the Gospels and Acts 
and Epistles as the word of God, you cannot possibly, 
while reason maintains her sway, submit . to the claims of 
the Bishop of Rome as now maintained. 

It must be remembered that the principles of Church 
government stated by our Lord in His parting communi- 
cation to His Apostles, do not stand alone in the Gospels 
as an exceptional declaration on our Lord's part. On the 
contrary, all that goes before in His training and education 
of those whom He called and chose to be with Him, leads 
up to this His plenary and final commission and charter. 
The alleged exceptions on which Rome rests her case in 
Holy Scripture we will consider hereafter, and it will be 
seen, we think, that they make against, not for her. Let 
us bear in mind that we are in quest, not so much 
of decisive statements, clear, positive utterances and 
crucial acts, as of conduct and words and treatment which 
will have a bearing, a drift and purpose which can be 
clearly seen, and which must make for the one side or the 
other. To read Holy Scripture in this way will be found 
to be exceedingly interesting and profitable, and if we can 
happily succeed in illustrating the general principle by its 
application to the particular point, of seeking to discover 
whether the intercourse of our Blessed Lord with His 
Apostles during His earthly ministry, as an educational 
process, favored the Roman claims of Petrine supremacy 
or the Catholic teaching of Apostolic equality, we shall 
be accomplishing a double object — helping the cause of 
truth, and furnishing a valuable hint to Bible students to 
answer correctly the inquiry, How shall I read the Holy 
Scriptures profitably? 



CHAPTER IV. 



PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 



WHEN Cato sought to arouse the Roman people to a 
sense of their danger from their rival, Carthage, he 
concluded every speech which he delivered in the senate, 
with the words, " Carthago delenda est." It made no 
difference how irrelevant the closing sentence was to the 
subject matter which had gone before, the unvarying 
statement fell from his lips, and the more incongruous it 
seemed, the more thrilling and lasting was the effect which 
it produced. Gradually the sharp, ringing assertion, 
sometimes so strangely and always so emphatically uttered, 
made its way from the senate chamber to the streets 
and homes of Rome ; it struck a responsive chord in the 
national heart, and boys and girls, as well as men and 
women, could be heard shouting and singing, " Carthago 
delenda est." At length the orator's purpose was accom- 
plished ; the sentiment became an enthusiastic passion, 
and the Roman legions made the will of their countrymen 
a dread reality, when Carthage was overthrown. 

Cato's example and his brilliant success, are our excuse 
for repeating so frequently the root error of Modern 
Romanism. We must open the eyes of our people to this 
one great evil which poisons the whole system, and sinks, 
by comparison, all other errors and corruptions into insig- 
nificance. This is the giant heresy which defends and 



PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 29 

shelters all others; it is the Goliath which goes forth 
before the hosts and confronts you at every turn. Let the 
question be one of metaphysics in the discussion of the 
doctrine of Transubstantiation ; you will soon find your- 
self in the presence of the claim, that the Pope is the vicar 
of Cheist and the mouthpiece of the Church, and he, in 
the person of Innocent III., enjoined the teaching, as he 
had the right to do, as of divine authority and binding 
on the conscience, and hence it must be received — under 
the penalty, if rejected, of damnation. 

Let the inquiry be as to the validity of English Orders, 
and we make good our claim by clear, unimpeachable 
proofs as to the sufficiency of the ordinal and the compe- 
tency of the consecrators to confer Orders ; all objections 
are swept away by the overwhelming testimony of history, 
but we are brought at last, as we anticipated, to the issue 
of the Papal Supremacy. The Pope's authority, it is 
alleged, was not asked nor given, and consequently 
English Orders lack the essentials which could alone make 
them represent Christ and His Church. Or, we venture 
to dispute the teaching of Rome on the subjects of the 
Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and 
the Infallibility of the Pope. We show conclusively that 
the two lines of teaching represented by these recently 
imposed articles of faith in the Roman Communion, can- 
not be drawn inferentially, by the most ingenious handling, 
from Holy Scripture or any ancient Christian writer ; but 
Goliath steps to the front, and we are told that it needs 
not Holy Scripture or Patristic testimony to establish 
these alleged truths ; they rest upon the authority of S. 
Peter, speaking through his successor, Pius IX. 



30 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

Be the question what it may between Modern Roman- 
ism and the Catholic Church, and the drift of battle soon 
draws you into the presence of the monstrous claim that 
S. Peter was set over the rest of the Apostles, as their 
superior and absolute ruler, by the Divine Lord Himself, 
and that S. Peter was secured, by the gift of the Holy 
Ghost, from falling into error in the sphere of faith and 
morals, and that these, his special and peculiar preroga- 
tives and privileges, are inherited and exercised by his 
successors, the Popes of Rome. There is no use in skir- 
mishing with side issues and subordinate questions ; it is 
only a waste of time and a loss of material in resources 
and labor. Let us close with the great central claim that 
the Bishop of Rome is an absolute monarch, unlimited 
from beneath, that he is the head of the Church and in 
the place of Christ by divine appointment, and that what 
he is now, his predecessors have been all along from the 
first, since they derive from S. Peter, whom our Lord 
made supreme ruler of His Church, and placed in the city 
of Rome as the seat of his authority, and the center 
whence he should exercise jurisdiction over the whole 
world. 

This we deny, and the issue is made up ; but our antag- 
onists are unwilling to go into Scripture and antiquity on 
the question of supremacy alone. They cleverly associate 
'primacy with it, and shift and interchange the terms or 
their equivalent expressions, until the reader or hearer is 
confused, and they seem to prove, what they have not 
adduced one particle of evidence to establish. This is the 
line of the Roman Catholic controversialist always; he 
lays down one proposition and he proves another. He 



PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 31 

makes the unwary believe that he has established his 
point, while he has done nothing of the kind. By rare 
legerdemain, he substitutes statements which, to uncritical 
ears, sound alike, and by frequent interchange he bewil- 
ders the mind until he seems to make good, by abundant 
evidence, all that he originally claimed. This conspic- 
uously is the case with the question, and the only ques- 
tion which we propose to discuss — the claim of the Bishop 
of Rome to be, by divine right, the absolute ruler, in the 
place of Christ, of His Church on earth. This claim is ex- 
pressed by the word " Supremacy" and it involves what 
Rome now imposes as "defide" infallibility ; and this doc- 
trine of infallibility closes effectually and forever the door, 
which some clever sophists would gladly persuade us is 
still open, as touching any real freedom of the Episcopate. 
There can be none, and there is none, where and when 
their head, who is not only over them in the Lord, but of 
a different order from them, speaks under the guidance 
and protection specially vouchsafed of the Holy Ghost. 
Our contention is not about the primacy of S. Peter among 
his fellows. Wherever and whenever a number of per- 
sons act together towards any object or for any purpose, 
there must be a first among them to give unity to their 
action and harmony to their speech. S. Peter seems to 
have occupied this first place among the Apostles, just as 
the Archbishop of Canterbury is first among the Bishops, 
of England, and our Presiding Bishop is first among the- 
Prelates of the United States, exercising an administrative 
headship for the sake of order and utility. Such was 
S. Peter among his equals — their recognized leader, acting 
for them and speaking for them, though all the while one 



32 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM 1 

of them, and in no sense greater than they in office and 
spiritual gifts. This is primacy, but this is not what Rome 
claims for S. Peter. It is transcendentally more than 
this ; it is supremacy. She alleges that S. Peter was not 
first among his peers, because he had no peers on earth. He 
was lifted by his Divine Master above all men, in office and 
gifts, and was to rule them absolutely in himself and his 
successors, to the end of the world. This is supremacy. 

Here one caution is needed against the craft of the 
Roman Catholic polemic. His art consists in stating, in 
mild and general terms, the doctrine of the supremacy, and 
then he brings Scripture and the early Fathers into court 
to prove the primacy. If one examines the quotations 
adduced by Waterworth, in his " Faith of Catholics," to 
establish the claims of the Pope, he will see clearly what 
we mean ; or nearer at hand, if he looks into Monsignor 
Capel's draughts upon Patristic writings, he will find even 
better illustrations asserting one thing and proving another. 
It may be urged for Waterworth that when he made his 
catena of authorities, his Church had not advanced to her 
present position touching the status of the Pope. The 
Vatican decrees of 1870 had not then been formulated and 
issued, binding the false claims of papal supremacy and 
infallibility as articles of faith upon all believers in the 
obedience of Rome. Then, when Waterworth was prose- 
cuting and completed his onerous and meritorious labors, 
Roman Catholic Catechisms, sanctioned by the highest 
official authority in this country, taught the children of 
the faithful, that papal infallibility was a Protestant inven- 
tion and slander. The Catechisms are still issued from the 
press, but they have been purged of this vicious matter. 



PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 33 

Evidently infallibility is not one of the spiritual endow- 
ments of the Roman hierarchy in America. 

Let it be remembered, then, that primacy and suprem- 
acy are two essentially different things, that the one cannot 
be made a substitute for the other ; that the one is true of 
S. Peter, he was first among his equals ; the other is not, 
he was not supreme over his fellow Apostles as inferiors. 
Again, the primacy of the See of Rome among the Patriarch- 
ates, her equals in the first centuries, is clearly proved 
by history ; while her present claim to rule the Churches 
by divine right, as their supreme head, is overwhelmingly 
and incontestably refuted by history. It is just here that 
the trickery is practiced. Rhetorical statements are made 
about S. Peter's see, and S. Peter's prerogatives, and S. 
Peter's privileges, and S. Peter's successors, and the recog- 
nition which they received as such in the early Church, 
and it is assumed that these have been all along what they 
are claimed to be, and acknowledged to be, by Roman 
Catholics to-day. The early Fathers then are marshalled 
in grand array, and their testimony is produced, and their 
expressions, innocent of any such meaning as now attaches 
to them, are triumphantly asserted to settle the question, 
and prove, beyond peradventure, the supremacy of the 
Pope. But when we come to cross-question these wit- 
nesses, to test what they meant by what they did, we dis- 
cover that their evidence is as strong as anything can be 
against Modern Romanism. 

We must go back and see what our Blessed Lord 
trained S. Peter to be, while He was with him as his Mas- 
ter on earth, and how He taught S. Peter's fellow-disci- 
ples to regard him in his relation to them. We must look 



34 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

at the Pentecostal Church while the Blessed Spirit fills 
her with His miraculous presence, and preserves her 
records for us in the sacred Scriptures, in order to ascer- 
tain just what S. Peter claimed for himself, and what his 
colleagues conceded to him. We must inquire what the 
early Fathers understood by the See of the Blessed Peter, 
S. Peter's prerogatives, and similar expressions, and then 
we shall be in a condition to say, without fear of refuta- 
tion, to the champion of Modern Pome, "Stand back; 
your claims are disallowed by our Loed. He never edu- 
cated S. Peter to be, nor appointed S. Peter to be, the 
supreme ruler of his brethren. Your claims are dis- 
allowed by the Holy Ghost. He never authorized S. 
Peter to act as head of the Church, exercising absolute 
jurisdiction over her as supreme. Your claims are dis- 
allowed by the early Fathers. They never in practice 
show that they even dreamed of such a thing as a Bishop 
of Rome inheriting what S. Peter never possessed, and in 
the nature of things never could have possessed. They 
use the expressions, S. Peter's see, S. Peter's prerogatives, 
S. Peter's privileges, S. Peter's authority, S. Peter's head- 
ship, and like phrases, in accordance with Scripture ideas 
and practice as teaching the primacy of S. Peter, and not 
the supremacy. Read in the light of modern develop- 
ments, this patristic language becomes full of new and 
strange meaning, which those early Fathers would repudi- 
ate with unfeigned horror, as did Gregory the Great, were 
they to rise from the dead. Let us hear S. Gregory as he 
refuses the title, 'Universal Bishop,' himself, and in- 
veighs against its assumption by another, writing to John 
the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, in 595. He says : 



PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 35 

'Truly, Peter, the chief Apostle, a member of the Holy 
and Universal Church, Paul, Andrew, John, what are they 
save heads of single flocks, and yet all members under 
one Head? * * The Saints before the Law, the Saints 
under the Law, the Saints under grace — all these make up 
the body of the Lord, and are reckoned among the mem- 
bers of the Church, but not one of them ever wished to be 
styled 'Universal.'" 



CHAPTER V. 



WAS S. PETEE THE SUPREME HEAD? 



THE Church of Rome without the Pope would be like 
the human being without the head. He is essential 
to its existence as a living entity : hence, on the assumption 
that the maxims of Gregory VII., and the principles 
formulated in the Bulls of Boniface VIII., and the Vatican 
decrees of 1870 are true, there never could have been, and 
there never has been a moment since the day of the 
Church's nativity when she did not possess a head on 
earth, above all, ruling all, and subject to none. The head- 
ship of S. Peter must have been as complete and fully 
exercised as it has been by any of his alleged successors 
to whom it has been handed down. We cannot conceive 
of a primacy, a condition of the first among equals, be- 
coming, by divine right, a lordship over all, a supremacy, unless 
it be by a special revelation from God, duly attested, 
making known His will in this particular, and settling the 
question of S. Peter's jurisdiction and that of his success- 
ors in office forever. Consequently, if we do not find the 
supremacy, observe we do not say the primacy, of S. Peter 
anticipated by our Lord's training of His Apostles, as 
sketched in the Gospels and exercised in the government 
of the Church from the beginning, as disclosed in the 
history of the Acts of the Holy Apostles, and their Epis- 
tles, and the Revelation of S. John, covering a period of 



WAS 8. PETER THE SUPREME HEAD f 37 

more than half a century at least from the day of Pente- 
cost, then we may fairly demand, where is the warrant for 
any alleged successor of S. Peter claiming and exercising 
powers and prerogatives which, so far as we learn from 
Holy Scripture, the great Apostle never possessed, much 
less used ? We have the right to demand this, and it is 
our bounden duty to insist upon this one point, waiving 
all other considerations and questions until our challenge 
is met and amply satisfied. 

It is the craft, the clever policy, of the advocate of 
Rome, to seek to divert the attention, to raise other issues, 
to juggle with the words primacy and supremacy, to use 
corrupt and false quotations from the Fathers, to try in 
any and every way to obscure the fundamental, root 
question, to hide it, if possible, from view, and to strut 
over the field in apparent triumph, with a pompous dis- 
play of learning, and an imposing array of authorities 
upon questions which may be true or not, but which have 
not been in dispute. We must keep him to the point ; 
we must ring out our sharp note of warning, " Carthago 
delenda est." "Carthago" is the city at which we aim 
our assault. It will not do to substitute another city. 
We have set our face like a flint ; we are not to be turned 
from our purpose. Destroy Carthage, and we care little 
or nothing for the rest ; all else will take care of itself. 
Prove that the Bishop of Rome is by divine right the Head 
of the Church on earth, and you have established all that 
is worth contending about ; fail to prove this, and Rome 
has nothing left in false and corrupt doctrine and prac- 
tice which will not crumble away and disappear. Destroy 
Carthage, and her fleets, and colonies, and resources in 



38 WHAT 18 MODERN ROMANISM f 

rnen and money will lose their evil associations, and no 
longer trouble the nations with their presence. They 
may remain in whole, or in part, but their power for 
working mischief will be forever gone, and in new com- 
binations they may become wholesome elements of health 
and strength to the world at large. So with the dogma of 
Papal Supremacy. It is the Carthage in the doctrinal and 
practical system of Modern Romanism. Prove that to be 
unsupported by Scripture and early Ecclesiastial History, 
or in a word destroy it, and the errors and corruptions, 
which like parasites have grown from it and been fed by 
it, will perish, and the countless evil forces which issue 
from it and are abroad in western Christendom as a 
mighty power, will lose their vitality, and be paralyzed 
and die. "Carthago delenda est." Slay Goliath, and the 
Philistines will turn and flee. 

We address ourselves to the point, did our Blessed Lord 
during His earthly ministry educate His Apostles to sub- 
mit to one of their number as their absolute lord and master 
when He was gone up on high ; or did He train them to 
rule and administer the Church, of which He made them 
overseers, as brethren, equals under Him, the Supreme Ruler 
and King ? Surely the two systems imply a different 
course of preparation, and one or the other must appear 
in the four inspired narratives, which relate with more or 
less of fullness, our Saviour's intercourse with the twelve, 
prior to His Ascension. All with one voice allow that 
Christ employed the period of His earthly ministry in 
training those whom He had chosen to be with Him from 
His Baptism until the day in which He was taken up 
from them into Heaven, for the offices which they were to 



WAS 8. PETER THE SUPREME HEAD f 39 

fill and the duties which they were to discharge in His 
Church in the future. If this be so, and it would seem to 
be most unreasonable to deny it, then most of all — if one 
of the twelve in after years, when Jesus had left them in 
bodily presence, was to take His place and be supreme 
over them in command — we would more than expect, we 
would be confident that we should trace all through the 
Gospels, lines of teaching and training leading up to this 
result, so that when the time of Christ's departure arrived, 
and the Holy Ghost revealed to them that the new order 
of things had actually replaced the old, that the Kingdom 
of God and of His Son was indeed come, then that one so 
trained and prepared would at once take his rightful place, 
and assume control of the Church on earth from the hour 
of its birth. If, on the. other hand, no such supremacy 
was in the intention of our Lord, then we would look for 
a training of His Apostles by Jesus, which would educate 
them to work together in co-ordination under Him as 
brethren, and guard them against that ambition which is 
natural to the naughty heart of man, and which, unless 
warning were repeatedly and emphatically given, would 
inevitably obtrude itself, and bring countless evils upon 
the divine Kingdom which they were appointed to 
administer. 

Which of the two systems of training do we discover as 
we read the Gospels — the system that suggests an absolute 
monarchy, governed by a single potentate, or the system 
which implies co-ordinate authority on the part of all to 
whom that authority is entrusted, exercised in mutual 
dependence upon the great Head of the Church in Heaven ? 
The answer is, immediate and emphatic, the latter. Our 



40 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

Lord is careful to treat His Apostles as officially on a 
level. It is true there were personal preferences on his 
part ; there were differences of position and relation on 
theirs, but these did not center in the same individual. 
S. Andrew was the first called ; S. John was the best loved ; 
S. Peter, S. James and S. John seem to have been the 
most advanced in spiritual development, and to have been 
in consequence the most trusted. The question did 
rise among them which of them should be the greatest ; 
and then, if ever, had it been in our Lord's mind to have 
constituted the government of His Church as an absolute 
unlimited monarchy, He would have made known His 
will and disclosed His intention of appointing S. Peter 
supreme over all, and lodging in his hands absolute con- 
trol, unlimited from beneath, over his fellow-disciples and 
all estates of His Church. So far from His doing this, He 
rebuked with severity their evil temper, and made His 
teaching more emphatic by embodying it in an object 
lesson. He took a little child, and made it a perpetual 
illustration and memorial of the spirit of humility and 
meekness which He would have them cultivate in their 
intercourse with each other. When He sends out the 
twelve on their first mission, it is by two and two, not one 
before the rest and over the rest as His special deputy, and when 
they return they give in their account to Him jointly as a 
body, acting in co-ordination on the same level, and not 
in subjection to a leader commissioned to govern them and 
speak for them. At last, as at first, when he gives them 
their final orders, as He is about to ascend and seat Him- 
self as the Captain of our salvation on the throne of God 
in Heaven, He treats them as He did at first. He makes 



WAS 8. PETER THE SUPREME HEAD % 41 

no distinction between them. He does not appoint one of 
them His viceroy over the rest. He addresses them as on 
a level. Unless there was a sealed and secret commission 
of which the Gospels know nothing and the early Church 
had never heard, then S. Peter was left equal to his fellow 
Apostles in the government of the divine society, and no 
claim can be made out for his official superiority from the 
Word of God. The entire course of treatment which the 
Apostles received at the hands of their Master as a prepara- 
tion for their future work, is inconsistent throughout, from 
the record of their call to His parting behest, with any offi- 
cial inequality among them. Let the Gospels be read with 
reference to this point, and a very strong argument will 
emerge from the inspired story, and grow stronger as the 
narrative draws towards the conclusion, against the suppo- 
sition that S. Peter, or any one of the Apostles, is to be 
the official superior of his fellows. 

If in time to come, when the Church which our Lord 
in the Gospels speaks of as an institution about to be, 
comes into being, we find that it is governed by S. Peter 
as the supreme ruler, then Christ not only gives no hint 
that such would be the case, but He makes special pro- 
vision against such a state of things being allowed to ex- 
ist, by forewarning His Disciples against it, and forbidding 
it, and denouncing it as evil in principle. The whole 
drift of the Gospels, as unfolding our Lord's training of 
His Apostles, is uniformly in favor of official equality, 
and against supremacy, and this drift is made up, as the 
current of a stream is composed of innumerable drops of 
water all flowing in one direction, of words and deeds and 
suggestions and associations and inferences almost with- 



42 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

out number, all leading up to one conclusion. Our Lord's 
words and deeds on many occasions, and His forbearing 
to speak and act on as many and more occasions, what He 
said and did, and what He did not say and do, harmonize 
and are perfectly consistent on the supposition that He 
was educating His Apostles to be equals under Him in 
the government and administration of His Church, which 
He would bring into existence on the day of Pentecost. 

In oppositon to this statement that the current of the 
Gospel narrative flows smoothly and steadily in one direc- 
tion against Petrine claims, two passages are adduced by 
Koman Catholic theologians, on which, so far as Scripture 
is concerned, they are accustomed to rest their whole case. 
The first occurs in the Gospel according to S. Matthew, and 
is our Lord's address to S. Peter after he had made his 
famous confession of faith: "Thou art Peter, and upon 
this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it." (S. Matt., xvi., 18.) The 
second is recorded in the Gospel according to S. John, and 
is Christ's thrice repeated word to S. Peter : " Feed My 
lambs ; Feed My sheep ; Feed My sheep." (S. John, xxi., 
15 et seq.) These alleged exceptions to our Lord's uniform 
treatment of His Disciples as officially equals, we will con- 
sider later, and will close the present chapter with drawing 
attention to the very remarkable promise made by our 
Lord to the twelve at the suggestion of S. Peter (S. Matt., 
xix., 28; S. Luke, xxii., 28-30.) Let the application of 
these words be what it may as interpreted by different 
commentators, their significance as bearing upon the point 
which we are discussing would seem to be decisive. Jesus 
is speaking of His Kingdom, the Church, and it is of little 



WAS S. PETER THE SUPREME HEAD f 43 

consequence whether He refers to the Christian dispensa- 
tion prior to the final judgment, or to the Church in her 
triumphant condition in Heaven. In either case we can 
satisfactorily explain the divine promise or prophecy only 
on the theory that the Apostles were officially on an equality. 
Allow that S. Peter is the prince of the Apostles, the supreme 
vicar of Christ, ruling his fellows as an absolute monarch 
does his ministers, and the statement of Christ seems inex- 
plicable. The facts and words as recorded by S. Matthew 
are these : "Then answered Peter and said unto Him, Be- 
hold we have forsaken all and followed Thee, what shall 
we have therefore ? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I 
say unto you, that ye which have followed Me, in the re- 
generation when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of 
His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel." Observe, there is no distinc- 
tion in the thrones ; their number alone is mentioned ; they 
are twelve, and they are on equality unless it can be shown 
from some other passage of Scripture that S. Peter's throne 
is above the rest. This is not the condition of the Roman 
Catholic hierarchy ; the Pope's throne is above all others. 
What a comment upon our Lord's revelation of the future 
official dignity of His Apostles on their twelve thrones, 
under Him in His Kingdom, as presented in these wond- 
rous words, do the proceedings of the Council of Florence 
exhibit ! In that Council, as indeed must be the case in 
every Roman Catholic Council, the Pope, Eugenius IV., sat 
above all, and the contention for a long time was whether 
the Eastern Patriarchs should be compelled to submit to 
the humiliation of kissing the Pope's toe. " Ye shall sit 
on twelve thrones," says our Lord in answer to S. Peter's 



44 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

question, making no distinction between his and the other 
eleven. '• Thou shalt sit," says Modern Rome to S. Peter's 
alleged successor, " on a throne high exalted above all, and 
all Patriarchs, as well as Cardinals, Metropolitans, Arch- 
bishops and Bishops, shall prostrate themselves at thy 
footstool and sit on benches at thy feet." Observe once 
more, the jurisdiction appointed by our Lord's commis- 
sion is the same, "judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Each 
Apostle has his tribe by the direct appointment of Christ. 
Not so, says Modern Rome ; S. Peter and his successors 
have the jurisdiction over all the tribes, and they appoint 
their deputies to rule under them at their pleasure. The 
Gospels, in order to sustain Roman Catholicism, must be 
reconstructed and re-written. 



CHAPTER VI. 



ROME VS. THE BIBLE. 



ONE may always suspect that his theology is one- 
sided, if he rests exclusively upon a few passages of 
Scripture, and ignores the rest. The application of this 
test will always be unwelcome to the heretic and schis- 
matic. The fundamental verities of Christianity are 
proved not by isolated texts, but by the entire Bible. The 
polity of the Church of God is not revealed by four or 
five passages of the New Testament, while all the rest of 
the volume is either silent upon the subject, or else in ap- 
parent conflict with it ; on the contrary, it is clearly set 
forth in anticipation in the Gospels, and in fulfillment as 
in actual operation, in the Acts and the Epistles. The 
whole drift of Revelation establishes the articles of the 
faith once for all delivered to the Saints ; and the Law 
and the Prophets lead up to the Government of 
the Church as constituted by Christ, and organized and 
administered by the Apostles under the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit. 

What is to be thought of a theological system which 
entrenches itself, not in the analogy of the Word of God, but 
in a few chapters of a single Epistle of S. Paul? Such a 
system is Calvinism. Are there not grounds for alarm in 
reference to the soundness of one's religious teaching, 
when he is forced to depreciate much of the Bible, and 

4 



WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM 



actually stigmatize a book of the Sacred Canon as "an 
Epistle of straw ? " Such did Martin Luther. Is there 
not good ground for distrust, before we advance one step 
further, when we find the champions of the Polity of 
Modern Rome, always quoting four or five texts, and leav- 
ing the rest of Holy Scripture entirely out* of account? 
Does she not thereby raise the suspicion that she is to be 
classed in this respect with Calvinism and Lutheranism, 
and other heresies and schisms, which pervert and cor- 
rupt the truth, and rend the Body of Christ ? It is even 
so, and examination will show that the doubt suggested is 
confirmed by the facts. 

As regards her present position in Polity and corrup- 
tions of the faith, Rome is identified with heresy and 
schism. Her attitude and line of defence are essentially 
the same. What saves her from immediate disintegration 
under the operation of the sect spirit, is her admirable 
organization, and the fact that her errors are positive errors, 
additions to the body of the truth, not negative errors, sub- 
tractions from the unity of the faith. The effect is very 
different in the two cases. The analogy of the faith still 
preserved, in the profession of all the articles of the creed, 
upholds the fabric, even though heavy burdens of error 
be added and heaped upon the system of belief. Even 
here, however, the poison of heresy must ultimately do 
its deadly work, though the fatal effects are much longer 
delayed, and more slow in their operation. On the other 
hand, negative errors at once impair the integrity of the 
faith, derange the body of truth, and lead inevitably with 
greater celerity than might have been anticipated, to the 
entire abandonment of the verities of Revelation. 



ROME VS. THE BIBLE. 47 

We find Modern Rome, then, when she undertakes to 
prove from Holy Scripture her root error as to the polity 
or government of the Church — that is, namely, an abso- 
lute monarchy with all power lodged in one officer, su- 
preme over all, the successor of S. Peter, the Pope — we 
find her in the company of heretics and schismatics, and 
that at a thousand points she joins hands with them, and 
notably in this : that she, with them, is reduced to the 
necessity of seeking to sustain her false teaching and prac- 
tice by the aid of a few isolated passages of God's Word. 
The Romanist, the Calvinist, the Lutheran and other sec- 
tarians, alike come forward with their pet texts, and fondle 
them, and caress them, and exhibit them, as though the 
rest of the Bible were not worth consideration. The poor 
Romanist in this respect is worse off than his brethren in 
heresy. He has fewer texts, and is, in consequence, forced 
to ring the changes oftenerand read, if possible, more into 
them. 

He does his part admirably well. He makes his Script- 
ure proofs familiar by oft repetition, and conspicuous by 
extraordinary display. We cannot turn over the pages of 
any Roman controversialist without meeting again and 
again, until the iteration grows positively tedious, the 
same four or five texts, and the amount which they are 
made to teach, taxes calm, dispassionate reason beyond 
its powers. The favorite passage of the well-known four 
or five, surrounds in immense letters the dome of S. 
Peter's in Rome, as though the Pope would thereby pro- 
claim to all the world, '' this is the ground of my privileges 
and powers, and the charter of my government. On this 
I rest my case with the nations, and demand as of divine 



48 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

right, their obedience and homage." The text of Scripture 
thus put forward by Rome in her own city and in her 
own Cathedral, as her palmary proof from Revelation of 
her right to absolute and universal dominion, and her 
freedom in the realm of faith and morals from the possi- 
bility of error, occurs in the sixteenth chapter of S. Mat- 
thew's Gospel, from the 17th to the 19th verses inclusive. 
Here we have the alleged Scripture corner-stone on 
which the whole fabric of Modern Romanism is supposed 
to rest; and consequently it is worth while to devote our- 
selves exclusively to its consideration in our next chapter. 



CHAPTER VII. 



1 ND Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art 



A' 



thou, Simon Bar-jona ; for flesh and blood hath 
not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in 
Heaven. And I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and 
upon this rock I will build My Church ; and the gates of 
hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto 
thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever 
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven ; and 
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in 
Heaven." S. Matt, xvi, 17-19. 

It would be enough for our purpose to show that these 
words of our Lord cannot possibly mean what the Roman 
Catholic says that they mean, and what they must mean 
if they convey by an instrument of donation the powers 
and privileges claimed and exercised by the present Pope 
as the successor and inheritor of S. Peter ; but we will go 
further, and without wishing to dogmatize, suggest the 
interpretation which seems to us most satisfactory. 

In the first place, then, we affirm, that these words of 
our Lord, " Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build 
My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
it," cannot mean that the gift, be it what it may, herein 
bestowed upon S. Peter, was intended for any other person 
or persons besides himself, then living, or that it was an 



50 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

endowment which he was empowered to transmit as a be- 
quest to another when he died, who in turn would hand 
it to another, and so on in succession to the end of the 
world. Grant what the Romanists assert, that our Lord 
means that S. Peter himself is the rock on which He would 
build His Church, and beyond this interpretation it is im- 
possible to go in the direction which the advocates of 
Petrine claims and privileges desire, and it becomes at 
once self-evident that the gift must be limited to himself ; 
it is incapable of transmission. The rock on which the 
spiritual building rests as a foundation cannot reach up to 
the top. Such a supposition when drawn out into words 
seems absurd, yet this must be the hypothesis, if the 
exegesis of the Roman theologians be true. They insist 
that in the Syriac language there is no such difference as 
exists in the Greek between Pelros and Petra, and in con- 
sequence that our Lord's words in the ears of those who 
heard them (they assume that He spoke in Syriac) sounded 
as follows : " And I say unto thee that thou art a rock, and 
upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of 
hell shall not prevail against it." "Such," says Cardinal 
Wiseman, " is the first prerogative bestowed upon Peter ; 
he is declared to be the rock whereon the impregnable 
Church is to be founded." (Lectures on Catholic Church, 
VIII, p. 266.) 

Now we say, if this be true, then this prerogative cannot 
be communicated to another. The foundation is once for 
all laid, and the material placed thereupon cannot be said 
to be in any sense the foundation, nor does it discharge in 
any sense the office of the foundation. If S. Peter be the 
rock on which the Church is built, and every pope in sue- 



" UPON THIS ROCK." 51 

cession inherits this wonderful honor and privilege, and 
rests upon the Prince of the Apostles, as layer after layer 
succeeds in the material stratified rocks, then must the 
Church be foundation and nothing more. The rock bed 
reaches from the bottom to the top, and the rest of our 
Lord's promise becomes meaningless, unless He designed 
to convey the idea that His Church was to be, not a struct- 
ure of diversified material built on a rock, but of the same 
material throughout, solid rock. This certainly cannot be 
His meaning, and hence we say, accepting the Roman 
Catholic exposition of the passage, it cannot possibly teach 
that this prerogative of the Apostle can be shared in by 
any other than himself. He is alone in the undivided 
glory of being under the whole superstructure of the 
Catholic Church. 

But this inevitable conclusion does not at all serve the 
purpose of the advocate of Modern Rome. Rock, with 
him, and foundation, must be pliable terms that he can 
bend and twist as he pleases, and their meaning must be 
variable, so that he can change it to suit his purpose . At 
first, rock must be taken in its proper sense, and recog- 
nized as the basis on which the Church is to rest, and thus 
explained, it refers to S. Peter ; then as a gift to be trans- 
mitted and used for a very different purpose, the rock 
must become soluble, and as it passes from pope to pope 
it must change what we may call its accidents, and adapt 
itself in their hands to the immediate needs of the Church, 
as age succeeds age. 

Now we say that this cannot be the meaning of the 
words of our Lord. We do not say that He did not mean 
Peter by the term rock, but we affirm that if He did, then 



52 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

He gave to S. Peter what was strictly and exclusively per- 
sonal, and is absolutely incapable of transmission ; and 
hence this passage, so emphasized by Rome, does not and 
cannot afford the slightest support to the alleged preroga- 
tives and privileges of the Pope as being the boasted in- 
heritance of S. Peter. 

We come now to inquire what is the meaning of these 
remarkable words of our Lord. In order to rightly inter- 
pret them, as we think, and we feel confident that we are 
instructed by the consensus of the ancient Fathers, we 
must take into consideration the circumstances under 
which they were uttered, and the occasion which drew 
them forth. Our Lord, in retirement, had asked His 
Apostles what the current opinions were regarding Him- 
self, His Person and His office. They replied to this 
question, and then He inquired still further as touching 
their own individual belief — " But whom do ye say that 
I, the Son of Man, am ? " Then Peter, as so often on 
other occasions, answered for himself and the rest of the 
Apostles, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living 
God." Then Jesus said unto him, " Thou art Peter, and 
on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it." 

It will be observed that our Lord did not simply ask 
the question, "Whom do men say that I am?" He did 
more. He asked a question and asserted a fact : " Whom 
do men say that I, the Son of Man, am ? " Consequently,, 
unless this allegation of fact were disputed or denied in 
the reply, it must be considered as acknowledged and 
accepted, so that the answer would imply the statement of 
fact embodied in the question. S. Peter's response, there- 



" UPON THIS ROCK." 53 

fore, when fully expressed, stands thus : " I say that Thou, 
the Son of Man, art the Christ, the Son of the Living 
God." And Jesus answered and said, " Blessed art thou, 
Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it un- 
to thee, but nay Father which is in Heaven. And I say unto 
thee that thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My 
Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. " 
S. Peter's answer, and we know that it was inspired for 
our Lord says so, is the confession in its fullness of the 
whole cycle of doctrines which are expressed in the word 
Incarnation. It was the first confession of the kind ever 
made by human lips. It was in effect the recitation of 
the Creed of Christendom. It was the initial proclamation 
of the whole truth as it is in Jesus. It was the sublime 
utterance, aided by the direct help of the Eternal Father, 
of belief in the Person and Offices of the Eternal Son of 
God. This profession of faith in the Incarnation, this 
acceptance of the doctrine of the two natures of our Lord 
— the human in its perfection, as expressed in the phrase, 
" Son of Man," and the divine in its absolute infinity and 
glory, as described by the corresponding phrase, " Son of 
the Living God " — this acknowledgment of the Person of 
Christ thus incarnate and anointed with the Holy Spirit, 
and of His Offices, implied in His being the Son of God 
and the Son of Man and the Christ, the Messiah, the 
Lord's Anointed, lifted him who made it into a position 
unique and peculiar. It brought him first, in point of 
time, in contact with the foundation, and so made him, in 
order of sequence, the first of those innumerable u lively 
stones " which should be built upon the rock. His place 
no one else could take ; his honor no one else could share. 



54 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

Hence we can understand why our Blessed Lord, refer- 
ring to the name which He gave him many months before, 
when first He called him, virtually says : " Now my 
prophesy is fulfilled ; thou art Peter, indeed, and on this 
rock, on which thou hast placed thyself by the confession 
of a true faith in Me, I will build My Church of like mate- 
rial, aided by the same instrumentality, faith, until the 
whole is complete." If all Christians are "lively stones," 
and so S. Peter styles them in his Epistle, then he, as we 
contemplate him, standing before our Lord in the solitude 
of Csesarea Philippi, and confessing truths hitherto unre- 
vealed and unknown, and which are henceforth to be 
accounted necessary to man's salvation, is pre-eminently 
the Petros, the fragment or piece of the Petra, the rock. 
This conviction grows upon us as we remember that S. 
Peter's declaration, " Thou, the Son of Man, art the Christ, 
the Son of the Living God," was a revelation made to him 
by the Eternal Father, and this more than human con- 
fession of faith entitled S. Peter to be called, as he was, 
Petros, a partaker of the divine nature by faith, and so a 
fragment of the Petra, which is Christ, Who through His 
Incarnation can alone impart to men the qualities and 
character which entitle them to be called "the sons of 
God," " lively stones," hewed and cut and prepared to be 
laid upon the one foundation, Jesus Christ, Who is the 
Rock. 

It may be an open question for those who have super- 
ceded the original Scriptures in their communion with 
the Latin version, the Vulgate, whether in any case they 
will accept the language in which the Holy Ghost speaks 
to man, or have recourse to some translation which suits 



" UPON THIS ROCKr 55 

their present purpose and helps them, as they think, to 
establish the truth ; but for us the originals are of supreme 
authority, and hence the distinction which the Blessed 
Spirit makes in reporting the language of our Lord be- 
tween Petros, as applied to Peter, and Petra, as applied to 
the foundation on which the Church was to be built, we 
believe to be final and conclusive against any attempt to 
set it aside by versions made by men. We feel confirmed, 
therefore, in the conviction that this passage means that 
S. Peter, in consequence of his sublime confession of the 
substantive verities of Christianity, aided by the direct 
interposition of the Eternal Father, was thereby joined 
in a very special and pre-eminent way to Christ, and 
drew from His divine Person virtue, as the diseased 
woman did by faith, which made him a partaker of the 
nature of the rock, Petra, so that he became Peter, Petros, 
a fragment or piece of that rock, and was laid, as all others 
must be, through faith in the Incarnation, as " lively 
stones " upon the one Foundation, Jesus Christ our Lord. 
All others who believe are Peters, but he was pre-emi-. 
nently Peter, because he was the first to make confession 
of his faith, and because he was, in doing so, strengthened 
by the special revelation of God the Father. This dis- 
tinction and these privileges are personal and cannot be 
shared with another, as a legacy transmitted by inherit- 
ance. Only one can be first, and S. Peter was that one 
and the divine gift of faith in his case was a gracious act 
of mercy, vouchsafed to him as a personal endowment, 
not as an investiture of office to be handed down in suc- 
cession to the end of time. The other alleged prerogatives 
of S. Peter must be reserved for subsequent chapters. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



DEVELOPMENT AND THE POWER OP THE KEYS. 



WE have already pointed out the distrust with which 
we ought to regard any religious system, which 
claims our acceptance as sustained by Scripture, because 
a few isolated texts can be adduced, which seem to sup- 
port it. We say seem to support it, inasmuch as there is 
scarcely any heresy or schism, which may not be so 
adjusted as to secure the apparent harmony of a few 
passages of the Bible with it, or rather, does not suggest 
and breathe into portions of God's Word new meanings, 
of which originally they were in men's minds entirely in- 
nocent, and which nobody ever dreamed of attaching to 
them, until they read them under the shadow of the 
newly developed system, spell-bound by the power of its 
influence. 

This is the case with all heresy and schism. It is pre- 
eminently the case with Modern Romanism. The heart of 
this system, the essence of its life, the very breath of its 
nostrils, is the Pope, as the successor of S. Peter and the 
inheritor of his powers and privileges. And yet, when 
challenged to establish, by the sure warrant of God's Word, 
this central, fundamental, and all-important claim, it pro- 
duces at the most, four or five detached texts of Scripture, 
and rests its case on these. Never until the eighth century 
did anyone, so far as we know, see the slightest shade of 



DEVELOPMENT AND THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 57 

the meaning which these texts are now supposed to convey. 
The ancient Fathers read them and commented upon 
them, but in no single instance do they interpret them in 
a way to faintly suggest, much less sustain, the theory of 
Modern Romanism. We are aware that Roman Catholic 
theologians adduce the testimony of the Fathers in support 
of their case, but it will be found on examination that every 
extract thus produced is either made, if genuine, to bear a 
sense which the writer did not intend, as, for instance, the 
Supremacy of S. Peter, instead of the Primacy, a common 
trick ; or else it is spurious. Moreover, these texts are 
taken exclusively from the Gospels, before the Church of Christ 
had a being, and hence, as conveying power and privileges 
to be exercised and enjoyed, they are prophetic, look for- 
ward to the near future, the years of S. Peter's life after 
Pentecost, for their fulfillment. 

It is unfortunate that not a single passage can be found 
by the Roman Catholic advocate in the Acts of the Holy 
Apostles, which cover the first twenty-five years of the 
Church's history, to show that S. Peter exercised over his 
brethren the supremacy which it is alleged our Lord 
gave him. It is equally, if not more, unfortunate for his 
cause, that he cannot find in S. Paul's Epistle to the 
Roman Church, where the Romanists tell us S. Peter was 
sitting and ruling as Bishop when the Apostle wrote his 
letter, a single particle of evidence that the alleged powers 
and privileges of S. Peter were even known to, much less 
acknowledged by, the great Apostle of the Gentiles. And 
perhaps the climax is reached when we come to the letters 
of the Prince of the Apostles himself, the fountain source 
of all Papal authority, prerogative, and privilege, and very 



58 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

naturally look, as he addresses world-wide messages to 
the faithful, for the assertion, in however mild a form, of 
his supremacy as the vicegerent of Christ. But we do 
not discover the slightest intimation that he was con- 
scious himself of enjoying any such prerogative, or de- 
sired or intended those whom he addressed to recognize 
him as holding any such position. 

This, we would say, was conclusive and final, but the 
Roman Catholic controversialist urges as his last plea for a 
lost cause, " Ah ! but these gifts to S. Peter were in embryo 
during his sojourn on earth, but they grew afterwards in 
the persons of his successors, the Popes, and put forth 
their leaves and blossoms and flowers, and at last ripened 
into fruit, when the dogma of infallibility, incorporated 
into the creed, fixed as of faith forever the status of the 
Bishop of Rome as above all, ruling absolutely without 
limitation, all estates in the Church." 

Well, in reply we say that the Blessed Spirit anticipates 
this clever and adroit suggestion of development and 
growth, not simply of the oak from the acorn, and the 
man from the boy, but of the impossible transformation of 
the fig into the thistle, and the olive into the thorn-tree, by 
giving us a sketch of the Church Triumphant in her per- 
fected condition, as she will be when all her gifts and 
powers and functions will have passed through all stages 
of development, and will exhibit what her divine Head 
intended them to be in their consummation of perfect 
beauty in Heaven. In this picture of the glorified Church, 
in which all her essential features and characteristics are 
portrayed, it cannot be pretended that there is any room 
for future growth; S. Peter if ever, should occupy his true 



DEVELOPMENT AND THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 59 

position ; if ever he is to be exalted above his fellows, and 
rule them from a superior throne, it should be then and 
there ; but does he f No. He is on an equality with them. 
This is conclusive, this is final. The Revelation closes 
the door of Scripture against Modern Romanism with its 
false claims, effectually and forever. 

Bearing in mind what has been said, let us go on with 
our examination of the four or five texts adduced by 
Roman Catholics in support of their system. Our Lord 
continues in his address to S. Peter (S. Matt., XVI, 19) 
" And I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of 
Heaven : whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be 
bound in Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
earth shall be loosed in Heaven." These words, it is said, 
confer upon S. Peter the supreme power of discipline in 
the Church, and this power thus bestowed he was author- 
ized to bequeath to his successors, who are the Bishops 
of Rome. 

In the first place, there is not the slightest intimation 
that this prerogative of the keys, as it is called, was a power 
which entitled its possessor to exercise lordship over his 
colleagues. Had these words of Our Lord in this connec- 
tion stood alone, we would have concluded, that as all the 
Apostles were addressed by our Lord, " Whom do ye say 
that I, the Son of Man, am? " and S. Peter acted as their 
spokesman, and replied for the rest, and his answer was 
acquiesced in by their silence, and so accepted by them as 
theirs, we would have concluded, I say, that this answer 
was addressed to all through S. Peter, but when we find 
Our Blessed Lord, after His resurrection, bestowing the 
same gift in essentially the same words, (S. John, XX, 22, 



60 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

23) upon all the Apostles, S. Peter included, conjecture 
becomes certainty ; we know that it is so. The gift, more- 
over, does not go to the rest through S. Peter, but to the rest 
with S. Peter. S. Peter receives first by himself, as the 
representative of his brethren, then he receives with them, 
as the sharer with them on the same level, in the same 
ministry of judgment and discipline. 

The reason why S. Peter is singled out in the response 
of our Lord, is sufficiently explained by the fact that he 
alone had spoken to our Lord, and so, naturally, he was 
addressed singly and by himself. But beyond this, S. 
Peter was first and before all in the use of the keys, and in 
the exercise of the ministries, which the keys symbolize. 
His brethren followed, and did what he did independently 
of him, but in point of time, after him. S. Peter, on the 
day of Pentecost, preached the first Christian sermon, and 
the result of his appeal was, that those who heard him 
were pricked at the heart, and asked him what they must 
do to be saved. His answer was direct and to the point, 
" Repent and be baptized every one of you for the remis- 
sion of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
Ghost ;" and there were baptized on that day, the birth- 
day of the Christian Church, about three thousand souls. 
This was the first Christian Baptism, the first admission of con- 
verts into the Gospel fold. The instrument by whom the 
door was first opened was S. Peter, and the subjects were 
Jews. 

Not long afterwards, we read that S. Peter was com- 
missioned and prepared for a special work, by a vision and 
a summons from Heaven, the vision of the great sheet knit 
at the four corners, and the command to go with the mes- 






DEVELOPMENT AND THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 61 

sengers who were waiting for him. Acting thus, under 
Divine direction, S. Peter went to Joppa, and after suitable 
instruction, baptized Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and 
his household. Again the instrument by whom the door 
was first opened is S. Peter, and the subjects are Gentiles. 
These two classes, Jews and Gentiles, make up the human 
race, and S. Peter applies the key and opens the door 
through which they enter in and become, by repentance 
and faith and the washing of regeneration, " members of 
Christ, the children of God, and inheritors of the King- 
dom of Heaven," " lively stones," to use S. Peter's language, 
resting as the first course on the corner stone, Christ. A 
corner stone implies, necessarily, two ivalls, which meet in 
it and are built upon it ; and these two walls, the Jewish 
and the Gentile were each begun by S. Peter. 

This, his initial work in preaching and baptizing, the 
Blessed Spirit and S. Peter emphasize. The inspired 
penman carefully records the facts, and S. Peter, in the 
Council of the Apostles and brethren at Jerusalem, asserts 
that God made choice of him as the one by whom the 
Gentiles should first hear and receive the Gospel message. 

Again, S. Peter signally, and in the most thrilling way, 
so far as we know first employs the keys in the opposite 
direction of exclusion and punishment, in the awful judgment 
pronounced and executed upon Ananias and Sapphira. 
These facts are most significant. They are the first in the 
long series which reach down from the day of Pentecost 
to the present time, and they place S. Peter first in the 
exercise of the keys in opening and shutting the door of 
admission to the Church. The other Apostles afterwards do 
essentially the same things, but S. Peter does them first 

5 



62 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

and before the others, as he received the commission 
prior to his brethren. 

S. Cyprian, who lived in North Africa during the second 
quarter of the third century (A. D. 248), and was in con- 
stant communication with Rome during the successive 
episcopates of several Popes, and was thoroughly abreast 
of the times in all that was known and taught in Rome 
and Carthage, wrote a treatise on the Unity of the Church,, 
which has fortunately been preserved. In the discussion 
of this question, if Modern Romanism be true, then S. 
Cyprian cannot be claimed as its advocate, since he gives 
as his exposition of the texts under consideration a view 
which is absolutely irreconcilable with the doctrine of 
papal supremacy and infallibility. Thus S. Cyprian 
speaks (De Unit. Eccles., § 4): "The Lord saith unto 
Peter, ' I say unto thee that thou art Peter and on this rock 
I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of 
the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind 
on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever thou 
shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.' To him 
again, after His Resurrection, He says, 'Feed My sheep.' 
Upon Him, being one, He builds His Church ; and — 
though He gives to all the Apostles an equal power and 
says, ' As My Father sent Me, even so send I you ; re- 
ceive ye the Holy Ghost, whosesoever sins ye remit, they 
shall be remitted to him, and whosesoever sins ye retain,, 
they shall be retained ' — yet in order to manifest unity, 
He has by His own authority so placed the source of the 
same unity as to begin from one. Certainly the other 
Apostles also were what Peter was, endued with an equal 



DEVELOPMENT AND THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 63 

fellowship both of honor and power, but a commencement 
is made from unity, that the Church may be set before us 
as one, which one Church in the Song of Songs doth the 
Holy Ghost design and name in the Person of our Lord : 
' My dove, my spotless one, is but one ; she is the only one 
of her Mother, elect of her that bare her.' " 

Must we point out that in this exegesis of these passages 
of Holy Scripture, S. Cyprian proclaims a principle of 
unity which simply involves the primacy of S. Peter, and 
distinctly, and in so many words, rejects the supremacy ? 
" Certainly," S. Cyprian says, " the other Apostles, also, 
were what Peter was, endued with an equal fellowship, both 
of honor and power :" This is inconceivable on the assump- 
tion that S. Peter was what Leo XIII. claims to be, 
supreme ruler over the entire Church on earth, above all 
ruling all, and himself ruled by none. No better, clearer, 
more concise and emphatic statement of Catholic truth 
against Modern Romanism is needed, than this testimony 
of the martyr of Carthage. Strange it is that Romanists 
should quote this treatise as supporting their system of 
false assumption and claim. The only unpleasant consid- 
eration involved in their doing so is that it implies that 
their opponents are either grossly ignorant, or idiots. 



CHAPTER IX. 



FEED MY SHEEP. 



THE next and last passage of Holy Scripture relied upon 
by Roman Catholics to prove the supremacy of S. 
Peter, and of S. Peter's alleged successors, the Popes, occurs 
in the twenty-first chapter of S. John's Gospel, beginning 
at the 15th verse, and reads as follows: " So when they 
had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter: Simon son of Jonas, 
lovest thou Me more than these ? He saith unto Him : Yea , 
Lord ; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him : 
Feed My lambs. He saith to him again the second time: 
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? He saith unto 
Him: Yea, Lord ; Thou knowest that Hove Thee. He 
saith unto him: Feed My sheep. He saith unto him the 
third time: Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ? Peter 
was grieved because He saith unto him the third time: 
Lovest thou Me ? And he said unto Him : Lord, Thou 
knowest all things ; Thou knowest that I love Thee. 
Jesus saith unto him : Feed My sheep." 

These words of our Lord, it is said, give the third great 
commission to S. Peter which completes his investiture of 
office and constitutes him supreme over all estates and 
' persons in the Church on earth. The late Cardinal Wise- 
man in his " Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Prac- 
tices of the [Roman] Catholic Church," delivered in the 
year 1836, and revised and republished by the [Roman] 



" FEED MY SHEEP." 65 

Catholic Publishing and Bookselling Co., Limited, in 1867, 
thus expresses himself on this subject (Vol. I, Lecture viii, 
page 262, etc.): 

" What then do [Roman] Catholics mean by the su- 
premacy of the Pope . . . ? Why, it signifies nothing 
more than that the Pope, or Bishop of Rome, as the suc- 
cessor of S. Peter possesses authority and jurisdiction in 
things spiritual over the entire Church, so as to constitute 
its visible head and the vicegerent of Christ upon earth. 
The idea of this supremacy involves two distinct but 
closely allied prerogatives ; the first is, that the Holy See 
is the centre of unity ; the second, that it is the fountain 
of authority. By the first is signified that all the faithful, 
through their respective pastors, form an unbroken chain 
of connection from the lowliest member of the flock to him 
who has been constituted its universal shepherd. To vio- 
late this union and communion constitutes the grievous 
crime of Schism, and destroys an essential constitutive 
principle of Christ's religion. " 

" We hold," he continues, " the Pope to be the source of 
authority, as all the subordinate rulers in the Church are 
subject to him and receive directly or indirectly, their 
jurisdiction from and by him. Thus the executive power 
is vested in his hands for all spiritual purposes within her ; 
to him is given the charge of confirming his brethren in 
the faith ; his office is to watch over the correction of abuses 
and the maintenance of discipline throughout the Church ; 
in case of error springing up in any part he must make the 
necessary investigations to discover it and condemn it, and 
either bring the refractory to submission, or separate them 
as withered branches from the vine." 



66 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

" S. Peter then," the Cardinal adds, (p. 273) " first in 
the vicinity of Ca3sarea Philippi and afterwards at the 
Sea of Galilee, was solemnly invested with an authority 
and jurisdiction distinctly conferred on him alone, as a 
reward for professions of belief and of love which pro- 
ceeded from him individually, and prefaced by a change 
of names, and a personal address, which showed them to 
be exclusively bestowed upon him. He was therefore 
invested with an authority of a distinct and superior order 
to that of his fellow Apostles, which extended to the 
whole Church by the commission to feed all the flock ; 
which excluded the idea of co-ordinate authority, as the 
rock on which all are to be secured in unity ; which sup- 
posed supreme command by the holding of the keys. 
And all this is more than sufficient to establish his 
supremacy." 

We have given these extended extracts from the Car- 
dinal's Lectures because they tersely yet clearly present 
the exegesis of a very learned, able, and conservative advo- 
cate of Modern Romanism, of the principal passages in the 
Holy Scriptures, which can be alleged in its support, and 
we are thus enabled to judge for ourselves what an 
immense superstructure is made to rest upon a very 
slender base ; for the Cardinal says expressly, (p. 267) 
" On the strength of these passages, principally (S. Matthew 
xvi, 17-19, and S. John xxi, 15), the [Roman] Catholic 
Church has ever maintained that S. Peter received a 
spiritual pre-eminence and supremacy." So far was our 
Lord in His tender affectionate interview with S. Peter 
after His resurrection, by the Sea of Galilee, from intending 
to lift His weak and disloyal Apostle above his fellows, 



" FEED M Y SHEEP." 67 

that He was, in the opinion of the early Fathers, simply re- 
instating him in his position among his companions from 
which he had fallen by his triple denial. They never saw 
in the behest, " Feed My lambs ; Shepherd My sheep ; 
Feed My sheep," a commission, which virtually placed 
upon S. Peter's head a triple crown, and made him lord of 
all the world. Such an interpretation is suggested by the 
Papacy in its later development, and is found convenient 
to give apparent Scripture support to what was the out- 
growth of usurpation and corruption. The Ancients ex- 
plain this passage by the immediate past, the Modern 
Romanists unveil its meaning by the remote future. Let us 
briefly state the two views, and leave the reader to judge 
for himself between them. 

Our Lord during His ministry had trained His Apostles 
for their work, and imparted to them their commission, 
leaving the crowning act of plenary investiture to His 
parting interview with them on the Mount of Ascension. 
At the time of His passion Jesus had brought them by 
successive steps up to the highest point of delegated power 
possible for the creature in the institution of the Blessed 
Eucharist, and the command given to them, " Do this in 
remembrance of Me." The ministry of " the breaking of 
bread " includes all other ministries, and implies every 
element of pastoral care. To be commissioned to do that 
is to be entrusted with the entire charge of the lambs and the 
sheep. This was the blessed privilege to which the eleven, 
including S. Peter, were admitted bv our Lord in the 
upper chamber on the night before He suffered. Ere the 
following morning dawned, this little band forsook their 
Master and fled. This was bad enough, but one out- 



WHAT 18 MODERN ROMANISM f 



stripped his fellows in cowardice and disloyalty and abjur- 
ed His service and denied that he had ever known Him. 

His crime was shocking in its enormity because he had 
been forewarned, and he ought to have been fore-armed. 
Besides, it was in a sense deliberate. Not once, nor twice 
only did S. Peter deny with oaths that he knew the Blessed 
Jesus, but thrice he repeated his awful sin. There was time 
between the denials for reflection, but still he persisted in 
his wickedness, and again, and again, and again, he told 
the wilful lie. 

S. Peter, therefore, had sunk below the level of his asso- 
ciates, when our Lord came back again from the grave. 
He had forfeited his official rank and dignity and privi- 
lege ; at all events, he who had so shamefully betrayed his 
trust had special need of recognition at the hands of his 
Divine Master. This recognition, in the opinion of the early 
Fathers, was vouchsafed S. Peter by the merciful Saviour 
in the scene so graphically described by S. John in the 
verses quoted above. The compensation is complete and 
the restoration is perfect. The threefold denial, which had 
its root in a craven spirit, is more than atoned for by the 
threefold pledge of love ; and the self-invoked malediction 
is more than neutralized by the renewal of official appoint- 
ment and command : " Feed My lambs ; Shepherd My 
sheep ; Feed My sheep." The immediate past fully 
explains this lovely scene. 

On the other hand the Modern Romanist tells us that 
the key which unlocks our Lord's words to S. Peter, is to be 
found in the status of the Pope as he became hundreds of 
years after S. Peter's martyrdom, by usurpation claiming 
to be the Vicar of Christ and as such the universal Shep- 



" FEED MY SHEEP." 69 

herd, feeding and caring for all the lambs and sheep 
throughout the world. In this view of our Lord's words, 
the commission bestowed as a new additional grant of 
power to S. Peter, was never exercised, nor attempted to 
be exercised, by the Apostle himself, but gradually came 
into operation as years ran on, in the persons of S. Peter's 
alleged successors in the See of Rome. 

In this way the advocates of Modern Romanism put 
aside the testimony of antiquity, and torture Scripture to 
make it lend at the best a feeble support to their system. 
Why is it, if our Lord meant to confer the universal pas- 
toral charge upon S. Peter, as immediately representing 
Himself " the great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls,' 7 
why is it that S. Peter, so far as we know, never exercised, 
nor attempted to exercise, his commission ? 

The Holy Ghost repeatedly brings the great Apostle 
into view, in the subsequent writings of the New Testa- 
ment, in relations and under circumstances, when we 
would expect, if S. Peter was the universal shepherd, that 
he would assert his authority and use his power. But on 
no recorded occasion does he seem to be aware of his 
prerogatives, much less does he attempt to assert them. 
We have two epistles written by his own hand, under the 
guidance of the Blessed Spirit, but even here, when 
addressing the faithful, "the first Pope," as he is called, 
does not seem to know that he is Pope, and while using 
the pastoral imagery forgets that he is the universal 
shepherd representing his Lord. Can this be credited? 
And if it can be, then why are S. Peter's alleged successors 
in the See of Rome his inheritors of the universal pastoral 
charge, and not his successors in the See of Antioch ? 



CHAPTER X. 



THE EQUALITY OF THE APOSTLES. 



WE now leave the Gospels, where alone the Romanist 
claims scriptural support for the Papacy as the 
inheritor of the alleged prerogatives and supremacy of S. 
Peter. 

It will be observed that the Gospels deal with the 
Christian Church as a kingdom of the future, and con- 
sequently whatever is said about S. Peter by our Lord, as 
to his position in that kingdom and his relation to it, 
must await its fulfilment until it is set up in the earth, 
and becomes an existing and present reality which we can 
examine and study. Now it is more than a reasonable 
inference, it is a necessary conclusion from which there is 
no escape, that what our Lord meant S. Peter to be in 
His kingdom, he actually became after the day of Pente- 
cost. The Acts of the Holy Apostles, as containing the 
first chapters of Church History, written by the Divine 
Hand ; the Epistles of S. Paul and of others, as dealing 
with ecclesiastical affairs ; and the Revelation of S. John, 
as disclosing the future conditions and fortunes of Christ- 
ianity, must present S. Peter to us, as his Master and ours 
designed him to be. Christ's utterances about him, 
and His promises to him must receive their explanation, 
and be made perfectly clear when the Church is organized 
and S. Peter, under Divine guidance, takes his appointed 



THE EQUALITY OF THE APOSTLES. 71 

place in it, executes his offices, performs his functions and 
exercises his jurisdiction under Christ's commission. It 
is inconceivable that it was God's purpose that, after our 
Lord, and on earth in place of our Lord, S. Peter should be 
the central figure in His Church ; and yet, during his mor- 
tal life, S. Peter should never take that place, so far as we 
know, nor assume that position ; on the contrary the 
Holy Spirit, in His narrative of the first things of the 
Christian Church, should again and again present facts 
and make statements which would be absolutely irrecon- 
cilable with the alleged supremacy and prerogatives of S. 
Peter. Can we believe that S. Peter lived and died with- 
out asserting his lawful claims, and that his fellow Apos- 
tles and contemporaries allowed his divine commission to 
be in abeyance during his lifetime, and often acted not 
only as though it did not exist, but in direct conflict with 
it ? Is it within the limits of possibility that the king- 
dom of Christ should have its birth, and grow, and 
spread through the then known world, and continue to 
exist during scores of years, and yet the lawful king, with 
the divine credentials in his hands, though present, should 
never seat himself upon his throne, nor demand the homage 
and submission due to his supremacy? Is it within our 
power to suppose that the doctrinal system of Christianity, 
could have been taught by inspired teachers to at least 
two generations of believers, without making known to them 
the fundamental and central principle of Church gov- 
ernment, which, if it were a part of the revealed body of 
truth, would modify and influence all the rest? Yet all 
these paradoxes, and much more, must be accepted, if one 
receives the system of Modern Romanism as of divine 



72 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM $ 

origin, resting upon the authority of Scripture, and sup- 
ported by the testimony of the first thousand years of the 
Church's history. 

We may safely challenge the Roman Catholic to adduce 
a single particle of evidence from the whole body of Script- 
ure which follows the Gospels, to show that S. Peter, in 
the exercise of his ministry, ever claimed to be or acted as 
the supreme head of the Church on earth, in the place of 
Christ, or was recognized as such by his contemporaries. 
Perhaps the best proof that he cannot do this, is shown 
by the circumstance that the attempt has been made, and 
the net result of such efforts is exhibited by Mr. Allies, 
who brings forward the fact that when S. Peter was im- 
prisoned by the command of Herod, after the martyrdom 
of S. James, prayer was made for him throughout the 
Church. This universal interest in the safety of S. Peter, 
Mr. Allies seems to think, establishes his alleged suprem- 
acy and prerogatives. If this be all, and this is the best, 
which the post-Gospel Scriptures furnish to support the 
claims of Modern Romanism, we may rest content that 
nothing can be brought forward from the New Testament 
which will supply the slightest aid and countenance to the 
Papacy, as it exists to-day in theory and practice. We 
would not notice the statement, so irrelevant does it 
appear, were it not for the respectability of the author,, 
and for the purpose of convincing the inquirer, that after 
the Romanist leaves the Gospels, he has no weapons in 
Holy Scripture to defend his cause. 

We proceeded to demonstrate the proposition, that the 
inspired history of the Church, during the life-time of S. 
Peter and up to the date of the close of the Sacred Canon, 



TEE EQUALITY OF THE APOSTLES. 73 

presents a series of facts which not only imply ignorance 
of the ecclesiastical polity of Modern Rome, but are abso- 
lutely inconsistent with it. Let it be borne in mind that 
the issue is not about the primacy of S. Peter, but about his 
supremacy. He was beyond a doubt the first among his 
equals, his fellow Apostles ; he was generally the most 
forward to act and speak, but he was not the ruler 
over his brethren. He did not live and move in a sphere 
above the eleven, as the Pope does above the episcopate 
and all estates in the Holy Roman Church. 

It is true that S. Peter took the lead in filling Judas' 
place, but he did not appoint S. Matthias ; it is true that 
S. Peter preached the first Christian sermon, but those 
who heard it did not recognize S. Peter as the sole supreme 
authority to instruct and guide them, since, when we would 
have expected them to ask S. Peter what they must do to 
be saved, the Blessed Spirit informs us that they framed 
their question in a different manner, and inquired, "Men 
and Brethren, what shall we do ? " This is very remark- 
able because it seems to be an inconsistency in the narra- 
tive, while it jars with the theory of Modern Rome. When 
S. Peter preached the sermon, what would have been more 
natural than that his auditors should have asked him alone f 
But no, they put their question to S. Peter and others, " Men 
and Brethren." It is true that S. Peter in the first chap- 
ters of the Acts is the most prominent figure, but that very 
prominence enables us to define his position and fix his 
place, since we can see him distinctly in the light which 
the Holy Spirit casts upon him on the birthday of the 
Church, and during the period of her infancy. Then, if 
ever, his true official character and status must appear, 



74 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

and so they do ; but they are not those of the modern 
Bishop of Rome, supreme over all, as it is claimed, by 
divine right, but a simple Apostle among Apostles, promi- 
nent among them, generally taking the lead, but not above 
them in office and prerogatives. He is subject to them 
as a body, and acts in obedience to their orders. 

Be it observed that the fundamental principles of the 
Church are clearly revealed in the book of the Acts of the 
Apostles ; for instance, the four notes of the Church appear 
in the history of the day of Pentecost ; unity, " they were 
all with one accord in one place ;" sanctity, " they were 
all filled with the Holy Ghost;" catholicity, there were 
present " devout men out of every nation under heaven ;" 
apostolicity, all the Apostles were there. The chief sacra- 
ments and means of grace, and the fundamental relations 
between the clergy and laity, are disclosed in the narrative 
of what happened on the first day of the Church's life, 
and the time immediately following. 

When the auditors of S. Peter asked, " What shall we 
do ? " the response prescribed Baptism and Confirmation 
as the initial steps: " Repent and be baptized every one of 
you in the Name of the Lord Jesus for the remission of 
sins ;" here is the preparation for Baptism laid down ; 
repentance, and of necessity, if repentance be sincere, faith, 
and the sacrament itself, "be baptized." And then S. 
Peter adds Confirmation: lC Ye shall receive the gift of the 
Holy Ghost," the expression which describes the inward 
part of the holy rite at Samaria, when S. Peter and S. 
John administered Confirmation to the deacon Philip's 
converts; for the divine record states: "Then laid they 
their hands on them and they received the Holy Ghost." 



THE EQUALITY OF THE APOSTLES. 75 

We read of those who were baptized on the day of Pen- 
tecost that "they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' 
doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in 
prayers." Here we have the objective faith of the Church, 
the creed, in " the Apostles' doctrine ;" the fruits of char- 
ity in the fellowship of the Apostles ; the Holy Eucharist 
in "the breaking of the bread ;" and the liturgy in the 
Apostles' prayers. These illustrations will suffice to show, 
that the essential characteristics of the Church and her 
fundamental institutions and principles, were made known 
as soon as she herself came into existence. 

Is it not, then, reasonable to suppose that the central 
vital principle of her government will also be at once put 
in operation, as soon as there are subjects to be governed, 
and that this fact will be disclosed ? Certainly it is reason- 
able so to conclude, but if the polity of Modern Rome be 
the divinely appointed government of Christ's Church, 
then, so far as we know, Holy Scripture is not only silent 
on the subject, but reveals a state of things as existing 
during the period covered by the inspired records, which 
is absolutely inconsistent with it and sometimes directly 
contradictory to it. 



CHAPTER XI. 



DEVELOPMENT, OR REVOLUTION ? 



r PHE very first believers, who were won to Christ on 
1 the day of Pentecost by S. Peter's sermon and S. 
Peter's instruction, u continued steadfastly in the Apostles' 
doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in 
prayers." The subjects of Modern Romanism must con- 
tinue steadfastly in the Pope's doctrine and fellowship, and 
breaking of bread, and in prayers, as the alleged successor 
of S. Peter and the inheritor of his so-called privilege and 
prerogatives, else they incur the penalties of the greater 
excommunication and are cast out of the Church. The 
change is radical and fundamental ; it cannot be explained 
as a growth and development from little to big, from small 
to great, from seeds to flowers and fruit ; it is the reverse 
of these processes ; it contracts and restricts, it localizes 
what was universal and individualizes what was general. 
The Pope is made to replace, not S. Peter, but all the Apos- 
tles ; this is not "growth." The jurisdiction of Rome is 
made to replace the authority of the twelve ; this is not 
"development." 

The Apostles, as a body, were entrusted by the risen 
Lord with the deposit of faith and jurisdiction, and in 
accordance with this commission S. Peter, ten days after 
its reception, taught his converts to continue steadfastly in 
submission to " the Apostles' " government and teaching. 



DEVELOPMENT, OR REVOLUTION $ 77 

Now, eighteen hundred years after the Ascension, he who 
claims to occupy S. Peter's place, ignores the Apostles in 
his proclamation of the Gospel, and requires that all who 
accept his teaching must yield unqualified obedience to 
him in the sphere of faith and morals. It will not meet 
the difficulty to say that this is an expansion of the orig- 
inal charter on the lines of its own implied principles. It 
is precisely the reverse. It is a narrowing to the extremest 
limit, from Catholicity to individuality. The twelve, as 
we are taught in the Revelation of S. John, symbolize 
Catholicity, their names are on the twelve foundation 
stones of the New Jerusalem, and they look, three to the 
north, and three to the south, and three to the east, and 
three to the west, and so they are for all the world, the entirety 
of mankind, and represent the universality of Christ's king- 
dom. To continue steadfastly in their fellowship, there- 
fore, is to be in communion with the Catholic Church . To 
ignore eleven of them and know but one is to forget univer- 
sality, localize one's faith and practice and tie them to an 
individual whose eyes, under the most favorable conditions 
for seeing far and wide, can look in one direction only. 
This is the reverse of what was taught on the day of Pen- 
tecost by S. Peter. 

Again, the commission given by the Redeemer embod- 
ied the principle of mutual restraint, and corporate and 
organic guardianship of the trust confided to the Apostles' 
hands. "Go ye" says our Lord, "and teach," not what you 
please, but " whatsoever J have commanded you "; not to 
any one of you, as he thinks or understands or interprets, 
but to you in the plural number, you as a body, you as My 
representatives, to whom I will presently send from the 

6 



78 WHAT 18 MODERN ROMANISM f 

Father, the Spirit of truth, to bring all things to your 
remembrance and to guide you into all truth. The prin- 
ciple thus plainly involved in the original commission is 
subverted and overturned when one usurps the place of 
all, and claims to be the sole teacher and custodian of faith 
and morals. The singular is substituted for the plural, 
and promises made to a number in co-ordination, are 
claimed by one as above his fellows, and supreme over all. 
This is revolution, and the new polity substituted for the 
old has lost the safeguard established by our Lord in the 
corporate unity of the Apostles, under Him, for the pres- 
ervation of His truth, and has paid the fearful penalty of 
its rashness and impiety in consequence, in teaching by 
the authority of one, apart from and against the protests 
of his colleagues, lies, and has added them to its creed as 
terms of communion and articles of faith. 

Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon the history of 
the Pentecostal Church as presented to us in the inspired 
narrative of the Acts of the Holy Apostles by the Holy 
Ghost, because one of His purposes in preserving for us 
this selection from the immense amount of material which 
lay under His hand, furnished by the words and deeds of 
the first believers, was to instruct us by example as well 
as by precept, as to the scope and meaning of the charter 
of salvation, the polity organized under its provisions, 
and its principles as illustrated by Apostolic administra- 
tion and practice. In this view of its design, the book of 
the Acts becomes a chart placed in our hands by the 
Blessed Spirit, to guard Christians in every age, even to 
the end, against the shoals and quicksands of negative 
error on the one hand, and the whirlpool of usurpation 



BE VEL OP ME NT, OR RE VOL UTION 9 79 

and false assumption on the other, and enable them to 
sail safely and securely between the Scylla of Rome and 
the Charybdis of sectarianism. Without this chart it 
would be difficult to resist the charms of centralization 
embodied in one supreme ruler, unifying under his 
sovereign control all nations and climes, and giving 
expression to his success in imposing his authority 
throughout the world, by enjoining the use of his native 
speech as the only lawful vehicle of worship to Almighty 
God, in the Latin Mass. It would be equally, if not more, 
difficult to escape entanglement in the misleading and 
seductive teachings of sectarianism, without the protection 
and assistance of this Divine help. 

But now to go no further than the terse description 
given by the Holy Spirit of the Pentecostal believers, we 
have our antidote to error, whether it present itself under 
the guise of Rome or Geneva. The first believers, repre- 
senting all mankind, for they included "the devout men 
out of every nation under Heaven," the first believers " con- 
tinued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, 
and in breaking of bread and in prayers." 

Does Modern Rome tempt you with its apparent unity, 
its marvellous organization, its specious claims to identifi- 
cation with the Rome of the Catacombs, the Rome of 
Gregory the Great, or even the Rome of the predecessor of 
Pius IX? Then turn to the luminous* words which 
depict in letters of fire the organic relation of the first 
believers in their spiritual home, the Church of the upper 
chamber, the Church of the day of Pentecost. It was not 
under a polity administered by S. Peter and in which S. 
Peter was supreme over all, that they lived and labored 



80 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

and suffered, and many of them met the death of martyrs. 
As taught by S. Peter and his colleagues they knew no 
such system. " They continued steadfastly in the Apos- 
tles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and 
in prayers." This is the Divine record, and it is crucial, and 
it is final. Modern Rome cannot abide this test. To enter 
its communion to-day one must make himself obnoxious 
to the scathing rebuke of S. Paul in his letter to the Corinth- 
ians, and solemnly profess himself to be " of Cephas " as above 
and over all the Apostles ; not of Cephas as one of the twelve 
who might have won him to accept the Gospel, and made 
known to him the Apostles' 1 faith or creed, but of Cephas as 
pledging fidelity to S. Peter's doctrine and fellowship in the 
person of his alleged successor, the Bishop of Rome. It 
was this position, and this only, which S. Paul condemned, 
and which the Holy Ghost condemns as He holds up 
before us the first believers as our example and model, 
who, although won to Christ mainly through the personal 
agency of S. Peter, continued steadfastly in the Apostles' 
communion, and reached S. Peter through their fellowship 
with him, not the Apostles through his fellowship with 
them. 

On the other hand, does modern sectarianism attract you 
with its plea for liberty of conscience, its license to believe 
and to do what seems right in one's own eyes, its boast 
that it is in sympathy with the spirit of the age and keeps 
itself abreast of the best thought and the most beneficent 
activities of the day ? 

Turn again to the first believers as they stand revealed 
to your gaze by the illumination of the Holy Ghost. 
Does modern sectarianism continue steadfastly in the 



DEVELOPMENT, OR REVOLUTION $ 81 

Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread 
and in prayers ? We would not judge them ; let them 
speak for themselves. They repudiate history as a test of 
truth. They slight the past when they do not scorn and 
contemn it. Their talk is of the present and the future. 
Popularity is, for the most part, their watchword. They 
claim in the grand sweep of human experience to have 
outgrown creeds and symbols of faith, and to be preparing 
themselves for a better Church of the future, which is to 
be evolved, in some way, out of the fragments of old and 
worn out systems which will be crushed under the advanc- 
ing tread of modern civilization, and a more enlightened 
and comprehensive philanthropy. They forget, or seem 
to forget, that the era of revelation is shut up in the centu- 
ries which are gone, and that the witnesses whom they accept 
as trustworthy in establishing certain documents out of a 
great number, as " the Word of God" they absolutely dis- 
credit as incompetent and unworthy of belief, when they 
bear testimony as to what was the Apostles' teaching and 
practice in the administration of the sacraments, and the 
conduct of liturgical worship. 

To continue in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, 
and the Apostles' breaking of bread, and prayers, after 
Apostolic times were over, is possible only in one of two 
ways ; either by direct revelation renewed to every fresh 
generation of successors, or by official relation established 
and perpetuated by divine appointment. History and 
our own experience shut out the former method, continued 
inspiration, as not the one employed by Almighty God for 
the government of His Church, while they are equally 
decisive in bearing testimony that the latter is. 



82 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM t 

The voice of the Apostles speaking through the earliest 
Christian law says, let a Bishop be consecrated by two or 
three Bishops ; and the voice of the Church, when she was 
affirming the divinity of our Lord in the Nicene Creed, 
proclaims, "A Bishop must be consecrated by at least three 
Bishops." And now we see in all branches of the Church 
which can claim Apostolic descent, save one, this rule 
faithfully observed ; and that one is Rome, Modern Rome. 
She asserts that the succession lies in the Papacy, in a 
chain of single links, the Popes, of whom the ancient 
canons say nothing and know nothing in this regard. The 
papal chain thus substituted for the Divine network of 
countless strands, is broken at every successive link, since 
an interval of time separates each Pope from the one who 
went before and the one who follows after.* Thus Roman- 
ism, equally with sectarianism, disregards Apostolical 
Christianity and slights the voice of the Catholic Church. 
Neither she nor they " continue steadfastly in the Apostles' 
doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in 
prayers." 

*See illustrations, pages 9, 10. 



CHAPTER XII. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 



LET it be always borne in mind that the book of the Acts 
of the Holy Apostles is designed to show us how the 
Church came into being on the day of Pentecost, and how 
it took shape and form under the direction of the 
Apostles, who for this purpose were inspired by the Holy 
Ghost. We must not expect to see in the beginning 
what time alone could develop and create, a system com- 
plete in all its details and equipped with all the appli- 
ances for work. These results are the growth of time, and 
many years must elapse in the history of Christianity 
before she can have a constituency sufficiently large and 
widespread to give her, in the modern sense of the terms, 
dioceses and parishes, save in a few exceptional cases ; and 
very many more years must pass before, in the face of 
persecution, she can possess buildings for worship, and 
material fonts and altars for the administration of the 
sacraments. 

But from the very outset we must anticipate a clear 
exhibition in practice of the fundamental principles of the 
polity of the Church, and an equally clear display of the 
sacraments and means of grace in all that relates to their 
validity and integrity. It would be inconsistent with 
reason to suppose that a child could be born and live and 
be recognized as a human being, without a head. It is 



84 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

equally absurd to allege that the Church, which is the 
Body of Christ, was born and grew to be a hundred, a 
thousand, eighteen hundred and seventy years old, before 
its head was developed, and took its full proper form and 
shape, and rested on its shoulders as a universally 
acknowledged member of its organism. 

This is the position of Modern Rome. Up to 1870 the 
supremacy of the Pope, as involved in the dogma of infalli- 
bility, was not required to be believed as an article of her 
creed. As a matter of fact, it was not accepted by a con- 
siderable portion of those whom the Bishop of Rome 
acknowledged as his own sheep. This was conspicuously 
the position of the Church of France. The Galilean 
accepted the primacy of S. Peter; he refused the supremacy. 
He admitted that the Pope was the ministerial head of the 
Church ; he denied that he was such by Divine right in 
the place of Christ, as a necessary part of her organization* 
Then, at that date, A. D. 1870, the Vatican decrees were 
issued by the authority of the reigning Pope, and the 
doctrine of the supremacy of S. Peter and his alleged suc- 
cessors, the Bishops of Rome, was added to the creed as 
necessary to be believed in order to be saved. 

The doctrine of the supremacy culminates in the dogma 
of infallibility ; that is, this assertion that the Bishop of 
Rome, when acting or speaking officially, cannot err, in 
consequence of his inheriting S. Peter's prerogatives, 
involves the assumption that S. Peter was head over all 
in the place of Christ, and sustained the double relation 
of representing Christ on earth, as the conduit through 
which all sacramental grace flows into the Church, and 
the head of the Church, through which she makes known 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 85 

the faith and rules in the sphere of morals. One who 
occupies such a place must of necessity be infallible, for 
if he were not and went astray, then, as he sums up and 
stands for all that Christ is on earth and the Church is 
on earth, our Lord's pledge and promise, that ; ' the gates 
of hell should not prevail against " the Church, would fail. 
The error of S. Peter or any of his alleged successors in 
the See of Rome, would compromise the Lord on His 
throne in Heaven, and the Church of God on earth. 

The inference, then, when these positions are accepted, 
is necessary and inevitable that S. Peter and all who 
succeed him to the end of time must be, when they are 
acting for or speaking for Christ and the Church, infalli- 
ble, incapable of falling into error or going wrong. This 
prerogative is theirs for the reason, and only for the 
reason, that they are by Divine appointment and com- 
mission supreme over all persons and estates in the 
Church, absolute monarchs, alone in their power and 
dignity. Thus the dogma of infallibility involves the 
doctrine of supremacy, and one cannot hold that the 
Bishop of Rome is the vicar of Christ on earth and the 
head, mouth and voice of the Church, without logically 
admitting that he is, when acting or speaking officially, 
infallible; nor, on the other hand, can he maintain that 
the Pope is thus infallible, without becoming responsible 
for all that leads up to the claim of infallibility, namely, 
'papal supremacy. 

This doctrine, if true, is as the head among the mem- 
bers of the body. It is the most important after the 
belief in God and the Persons of the Adorable Trinity. 
It determines the polity of the Church and fixes it as an 



86 WHAT 18 OMBERN ROMANISM ? 

absolute monarchy ; it limits the source of all ministerial 
and sacramental grace to one person and only one ; it 
defines how the faith shall be made known, and binds all 
to unconditional obedience when once it is officially 
declared. Surely, among the doctrines that relate to the 
Church and tell us what she is and how she exists and is 
governed, this, if true, is the head, the chief. Is it not 
strange, then, that the development of the head among 
the members of the body of alleged truth, as held by the 
Church of Rome, is last in order of time, and for eighteen 
centuries and more did not appear as organically required 
by her system of belief? Indeed it is, and we do not see 
how any one who has the New Testament in his hands and 
looks up from its pages to the Church of Rome, as she 
stands before the world to-daj^, with her head an absolute 
monarch, wearing a triple crown, and her estates, ecclesi- 
astical and lay, in complete subjection, in theory and 
practice, to his unlimited sway — we do not see how any- 
one can hold on to both; he must either drop the in- 
spired record, or else reject the claims of Modern Rome. 

Let us at present take one test : S. Peter was, as Rome 
maintains, in the place of Christ and above his brethren 
in office, power and dignity, since in all essentials that the 
Pope derives from him, and all that the Bishop of Rome 
is now, S. Peter was while he was in the flesh. Leaving 
out all that is accidental, all that can possibly be included 
in the domain of what changes with time and is ruled by 
circumstances, we come to foundation principles, and we 
ought to find them the same two years after the ascension 
of our Lord, in the person of S. Peter, as in the nineteenth 
century, in the pontificate of Pius IX or Leo XIII. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 



But we do not, and we ask how can this be, unless there 
has been a revolution, a turning things upside down, a 
pulling up by the roots of what God planted, and a sub- 
stitution of what is new, which man has invented ? 

Let us look back at the old, as the Holy Spirit ordered 
it and presents it to us in His own book, the Acts of the 
Holy Apostles, and then look at the new, as the Vatican 
decrees order it, and Modern Rome displays it in her 
system and polity. S. Philip, one of the seven deacons, 
preached the Gospel, as we are told in the eighth chapter 
of the Acts, in Samaria, and met with signal success. The 
good news of what he had achieved reached the ears of 
the Apostles, who were still all living and acting together 
in Jerusalem. At once they deputed two of their number, 
S. Peter and S. John, to go to Samaria in order to supple- 
ment and complete the imperfect ministry of a deacon, 
S. Philip. These Apostles obeyed the behest of their 
brethren and went to Samaria, and confirmed those whom 
the deacon, S. Philip, had baptized. The Divine record 
runs, " Then laid they their hands on them and they 
received the Holy Ghost." (Acts viii, 17.) 

Transfer the leading facts as set down in this narrative 
to Rome, papal Rome of to-day. Substitute modern names 
and officers for ancient. Picture to yourself one of the 
deacons of the Vatican making converts to the Cross in 
some remote town of Italy, and then sending the glad 
tidings of his success to Rome. Fancy the college of car- 
dinals assembling together, and the Pope with them, to 
determine what action was to be taken in reference to the 
deacon's report. Imagine this body taking order, so that 
it could be truly said that they sent the Pope and the 



88 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

Bishop of Ostia on a confirmation tour to an obscure 
Italian village. 

To state such a suppositious case as this seems absurd, 
because it is at once felt to be impossible. The essence of 
the impossibility does not lie in the change of circum- 
stances between the year A. D. 34 and the year A. D. 
1886, and between Jerusalem and Samaria, and Rome 
and Rhegiurn, but between the official status of S. Peter r 
as defined by the Holy Ghost, and of the alleged successor 
of S. Peter, as revolutionized and transformed by the 
wicked ambition of man. The less is sent by the greater, 
not the greater by the less. The whole body of the Apos- 
tles was greater than S. Peter, although he was first among 
them as his brethren, and hence they were competent to 
send him and his colleague, S. John, on a mission to 
Samaria, and it was his duty to obey, as he did, and 
went. In the theology of Rome, the Pope, as inheriting S. 
Peter's prerogatives is above all estates in the Church. He is 
greater than the college of cardinals and all the episcopate, 
and hence it would not only be incongruous and improper 
for them to assume to exercise jurisdiction over him, but 
it would be absolutely unlawful and would overthrow all 
order. For them, the cardinals and all the Bishops 
in the world, to undertake to send the Pope on any 
mission, however grand and important, would be an act of 
revolution, and subversive of the entire system upon 
which Rome rests to-day. Then why was it not so in the- 
case of S. Peter himself? He cannot be inferior in any 
respect to his successors and heirs ; rather he must be, 
if there be any difference, greater in personal dignity, 
since he received his office immediately from the lips of 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 



the Lord Himself, and they inherit from him. It cannot 
be that his true official position and prerogatives were 
unknown to him and his colleagues at the time, and were 
afterwards revealed, because such a supposition would 
negative the theory that our Lord gave him his com- 
mission when, yeai-s before, He said, in the presence of 
His disciples, " Thou art Peter, and on this rock I 
will build My Church," etc. It cannot be that the whole 
Apostolic college, including S. Peter, knew the true 
polity of the Church, but for economic reasons both S. 
Peter and they, his comrades, held it in abeyance and 
did not act upon it, waiting for a later day and a 
more convenient season to develop it, since for such a 
wild explanation there is not one particle of evidence 
in Scripture, in history or in reason. The only solution 
is, that the Church government of Modern Rome, ivas 
not the Church government established by the Holy Ghost 
and recognized by all the Apostles, when they sent S. 
Peter and S. John to administer the rite of the laying 
on of hands in Samaria. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



S.. PETER AND LEO XIII. 



MODERN Romanism asserts that the Pope, by Divine 
appointment as inheriting S. Peter's commission, is 
head over all estates and functions in the Church on 
earth, in the place of Jesus Christ. He rules the 
clergy and the laity; he guards the deposit of faith and 
the code of morals; he sits in Moses' seat and presides 
over legislation ; he is the absolute judge and the su- 
preme executive. The Bishop of Rome, in his official 
capacity, as a matter of obligation must be so regarded 
and acknowledged by his followers to-day ; and not only 
this, but they must believe that what the present Pope 
is, his predecessors have been, deriving their powers 
from S. Peter, who received them in their fulness direct 
from Jesus Christ himself. 

We have said this before, but it is profitable to repeat 
it, in order to make the argument more clear and con- 
vincing in its successive details, as we pass from stage to 
stage in the growth of Christianity under the guidance 
of the Apostles and their subordinates. The original 
picture must be brought frequently into view, in or- 
der that we may become so familar with the features 
which God has stamped upon the face, that we cannot 
be imposed upon by a counterfeit of human manu- 
facture. Observe, we are not contending that no change 



S. PETER AND LEO XIII. 91 

passes over the countenance as years run on ; that the 
babe does not undergo very great alterations in form 
and complexion and expression as it advances in growth. 
We admit all this, and more. We are ready to allow 
that, in the interval of thirty or forty years from infancy 
to maturity, such a transformation might be wrought 
that a mother might be excused for failing to recog- 
nize her only child. But we can go no further. We 
cannot be persuaded that any number of years would 
or could obliterate the essential characteristics of human- 
ity ; that one would lose in lapse of time the face of 
man, and become identified with another order of creation. 
We cannot believe this, and yet this is what Modern 
Romanism demands of our credulity when it requires, 
as a matter of faith, that we should affirm that in all 
essentials S. Peter was what the present Pope claims to be. 
If it were within our power to possess a series of pho- 
tographs of the same human being, representing his face 
at intervals of six months apart from birth to extreme 
old age, we would note great changes ; and perchance, 
if we left out all the intervening links and placed side 
by side the picture of the baby face and that of the 
old man of eighty, we might fail to identify them as 
belonging to the same individual ; but we could not 
possibly be misled as to their belonging alike to a human 
being. The eyes, the nose, the mouth, the generic stamp 
and impress must remain and survive all the ravages 
of chance and change, between the cradle and the grave. 
We can look upon the Pope, as he stands before us 
invested with the powers and prerogatives with which his 
system clothes him, and side by side the Holy Spirit 



92 WHAT IIS MODERN ROMANISM f 

places the photograph of S. Peter, as he appeared officially 
to the men of his day and generation while he was on the 
earth. As we gaze upon the two pictures, we ask, do they 
belong alike to men who hold the same office ? and we 
must answer, no. The Pope has risen above the level of 
S. Peter; he belongs to another order of dignitaries. 
S. Peter at his highest was the first among his equals; the 
Pope, at his lowest, is sovereign over all, as his inferiors. 
S. Peter might occupy a subordinate position ; the Pope 
cannot, as a necessity of his official position. S. Peter 
had colleagues, sharers in his office and labors ; the Pope 
has none ; he cannot have any ; the mere suggestion of 
such a thing, as viewed from the standpoint of Modern 
Romanism, is an impossibility, an absurdity. 

Let us bring the pictures side by side and compare 
them, as regards S. Peter's place and the Pope's place, 
in relation to a General Council. The time is not long 
gone by since Rome held some sessions of what she calls 
such an assembly, in 1870. The Pope summoned it, 
as is alleged, by Divine right ; no one else could summon 
it. The Pope controlled its membership ; no one could 
share in its deliberations unless he were invited by the 
Pope. The Pope regulated and limited its business, since 
nothing could be discussed or done without the knowl- 
edge and permission of the Pope ; he prepared its draft 
of agenda and submitted its schema of doctrinal enact- 
ment. The Pope was not a member of the council ; he 
was separate from it, above it. Its acts and decrees 
were of no force or value without his sanction. The 
Pope did not need the council, as a matter of necessity, 
as the sovereign of Great Britain and the President of 



8. PETER AND LEO XIII. 93 

the United States, by constitutional provision, require a 
parliament and a congress to enact measures before they 
can execute them. The Pope could have formulated and 
enforced the decree of his own infallibility without the 
intervention of the Vatican Council. The Pope can do 
without the Council, but the Council cannot come into 
being nor exist without the Pope. The Vatican decrees, 
without the approval of the Pope, w r ould have been worth 
no more than the parchment on which they were en- 
grossed. All this has passed before the eyes of the pres- 
ent generation ; all this we know as a matter of fact. 
It is stamped indelibly upon the picture of the official 
Pope as he confronts us to-day. Now let us look upon 
S. Peter in his relation to the first General Council, as 
the Holy Ghost reveals him to us in the fifteenth chap- 
ter of the Acts of the Holy Apostles. 

The progress of the Gospel had developed what we may 
call the first burning question which has agitated and 
divided the Church. There have been many such ques- 
tions since, but never has there been presented an}', save 
that which touched the Person of our Lord, of graver 
importance. When Gentiles yielded to the claims of 
Christ and asked to be received into His fold, the issue 
was at once raised, on what terms shall they be admitted ? 
Must they first be made Jews by circumcision, and then 
v be made Christians by baptism, or shall they at once be 
baptised, without the intervention of circumcision? It 
seemed an open question. There was much to be urged 
on both sides. God's words, in imposing circumcision 
upon His people as the sign of His covenant, seemed to 
imply that it was to be of perpetual obligation, and hence 



94 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

the Judaic Christian might reasonabty argue that all, of 
whatever race or clime, must first yield themselves subjects 
of Moses' law before they were qualified to become 
Christ's disciples. On the other hand, it might be urged 
that the ceremonial law was done away in Christ, because 
He fulfilled it; that baptism replaced circumcision, and 
that to require the latter as a preparation for the former 
would be illogical and unnecessary. 

Under these circumstances the discussion, as might be 
expected, waxed fierce and warm. All parties were drawn 
into it, since it involved the status of all. Jewish and 
Gentile convert were alike interested, because the decision, 
be it on one side or the other, would affect them all very 
seriously and nearly. To meet this issue, the first General 
Council was convened. We may justly call it general, 
because it represented the entire Christian ivorld as it then 
existed ; because we know that the Holy Spirit presided 
over its deliberations and guided its conclusions, and 
because its decisions have been accepted, with the Blessed 
Scriptures, by the universal Church. 

As the Word of God gives us the records of this Council, 
so it gives us an account of S. Peter's relation to it. In 
every essential particular, that relation, as thus portrayed, 
is different from the alleged position of the Bishop of 
Rome since Gregory VII. S. Peter did not summon the 
Council. It grew out of the urgency of the debate in 
Gentile Antioch, and S. Paul and S. Barnabas were the 
chief instrumentalities employed in gathering it together. 
When it was assembled, S. Peter did not preside over its 
deliberations nor open its discussions, although he was 
present and seems to have remained until the close of its 



S. PETER AND LEO XIII. 95 

sessions. S. Peter did not prepare the subject matter of bus- 
iness, nor did its decrees, when formulated and passed, wait 
for his approval in order to become the law of the Church. 

Nothing can be more decisive against the claims of 
Modern Rome, than the sketch of the Apostolic Council 
presented to us by the Blessed Spieit. S. James, of 
Jerusalem, presided, not as the deputy of S. Peter, for 
S. Peter was present and spoke for himself, but in his 
own right, as the local Bishop of the city where the 
Council was held. S. Peter was not the first speaker, 
nor the last. He was closed up in the debate as any 
other member of the body might be, by many who 
spoke before him, and by S. Barnabas and S. Paul, who 
spoke after him. S. Peter made a speech on one 
side of the question in dispute, pleading in behalf of 
the Gentiles. S. James, not S. Peter, summed up the 
discussion and gave the decision in these words : 
" Wherefore, my sentence is that we trouble not them 
which from among the Gentiles are turned to God ; but 
that we write unto them that they abstain from pollu- 
tions of idols, and from fornication, and from things 
strangled and from blood." (Acts xv, 19-20.) 

The decrees of the Council were not issued in the name 
of S. Peter, but they begin as follows: " The Apostles and 
elders and brethren send greeting," etc. The Council 
claims for itself the highest authority, since it asserts that 
its action is inspired — " It seemed good to the Holy Ghost 
and to us," it states as a preface to the injunctions which 
follow, and then it lays down "the necessary things" 
which have been from that day to this, binding upon the 
universal Church. 



96 WHAT 18 MODERN ROMANISM % 

The position of S. Peter, it appears, then, on the testi- 
mony of God's Word, was, on this crucial occasion, 
entirely subordinate. Where were his powers, and privi- 
leges, and prerogatives? If he possessed them, why did 
he not make use of them? Place the Council of Jerusa- 
lem, with all the Apostles present, inspired by the Holy 
Ghost, presided over by the holy James, side by side with 
the Vatican Council of 1870. Look on the one and see S. 
Peter in person sitting among his brethren in a subordi- 
nate position, and then look on the other and see the 
alleged successor of S. Peter in his palace, aloof from the 
Council, but. its lord and master, and answer whether the 
likenesses belong to the same office ; whether by any 
development along the lines of nature or of grace the 
Apostle of Jesus Christ, as he appears in the Council of 
Jerusalem, could be transformed into the Pope of Modern 
Rome, as he rules the Council of 1870 from the Vatican. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 



AFTER the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Holy 
Apostles, S. Peter disappears entirely from the narra- 
tive, and the Blessed Spirit limits Himself strictly to an 
account of S. Paul's labors in fulfilling his mission to the 
Gentiles, until his first imprisonment and sojourn in Rome, 
for two full years. The interval thus traversed by the 
inspired writer embraces many busy and critical years in 
the first and pre-eminently formative period of the Church's life. 
This was her first age, her first going forth to convert the 
nations, her first assertion of herself as the Kingdom of 
God on earth, on a basis as broad as mankind and a dura- 
tion as lasting as time. She is presenting herself for the 
first time in succession to race after race, and claiming 
their allegiance to her as an imperial power, organized by 
God Himself. She makes known her polity, she adminis- 
ters her sacraments, she exercises her discipline, she dis- 
penses her charities, she adds to her company of embas- 
sadors for Christ, she invests them with their office and 
supplies them with their credentials, she preaches the 
everlasting Gospel, she teaches her fundamental and 
essential truths — in a word, she plants herself and grows 
to dimensions which attract the attention, and excite the 
hostility of her neighbors, in every province and almost 
every considerable city of the civilized world. 



98 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

Relatively speaking, no greater conquests have ever 
since been made by the missionaries of Christ, than were 
achieved by S. Paul and his companions, within the 
period terminated by the closing chapters of the inspired 
history of the Acts. Is it possible that thus far, while 
the Church has in miniature shown what she will accom- 
plish in the end, triumph on every field and subdue every 
foe, is it possible that the fundamental principle of her 
government on earth should have been ignored ? It will 
not do to say, u The narrative is confessedly an epitome, 
very condensed and brief, a mere selection from an 
immense amount of material which is left out of accounts 
and hence we must not conclude that a matter was not 
taught because it is not distinctly mentioned." It will not 
do to urge this undoubted truth in reference to the point 
in dispute between the Modern Romanist and ourselves, 
namely, the character of the government appointed and 
constituted by Almighty God over His Church on earth, 
whether it be an absolute monarchy vested in S. Peter and his 
successors in office as viceroys of Christ, or an oligarchy limited, 
vested in the Apostles and their successors, acting in co-ordination 
and in mutual dependence upon their Divine Master, because 
this is the root principle of ecclesiastical polity, and it is 
not only impatient of being suppressed, but we cannot 
well conceive how it could be left out, either in the actual 
teaching of the Apostles or in the narrative which records 
that teaching, brief and fragmentary as it may be. 

Can we conceive that the system of English colonization 
could have started on its career, and made any progress 
without involving some knowledge of the sovereignty of 
the British crown, not only on the part of the colonists 



THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 99 

themselves, but also of those among whom they dwelt ? 
Can we conceive of any history of English colonization, 
however desultory, which neither directly nor indirectly 
made any allusion to the relations of colonies to the 
central power at home ? 

The case is all the stronger, because the older and 
more impartial Roman Catholic theologians admit that 
the government of Bishops, or episcopacy, is unquestion- 
ably revealed in the New Testament, and in this very 
Book of the Acts of the Holy Apostles ; then, we ask, 
why not the supremacy of S. Peter and the papacy f One 
solution of the difficulty is because these ideas are the 
product of a later age. They were unknown to the Apos- 
tles and the first believers. They are the growth of 
later centuries, and, as matters of faith, were not imposed 
upon the Roman obedience until A. D. 1870. The 
Modern Romanist has yet to find an answer to the neg- 
ative argument, which is so overwhelmingly convincing. 

S. Paul enjoyed a conference of fifteen days with S. Peter. 
To this he refers long afterwards, so that he kept fresh 
in memory that precious season of learning the truth 
from the chief Apostle, in the theory of Modern Rome, 
the sovereign pontiff and infallible teacher of all man- 
kind. Did S. Paul learn S. Peter's true official character 
and position in the Church of God on that occasion, or 
not? If he did, why did he ever after keep it to himself? 
If he did not, why did S. Peter suppress it when he was 
teaching the Apostles of the Gentiles, him who was to 
teach much the greater part of the then known world, and the 
very Italy and Rome where S. Peter has his alleged seat of 
empire over all the earth ? 



100 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

A prior question may be raised in this connection. We 
have an account of S. Paul's call to office. Why, we may 
ask, when he receives from Jesus his commission and sub- 
sequently his investiture, why, if he were to be placed in 
subjection to S. Peter, if he were to exercise his ministry 
in dependence upon him, why is no hint of this, so far as 
is recorded, given? Why does S. Paul, so far as we know, 
never recognize, by word or deed, his subordination to S. 
Peter? If Modern Eomanism be true, can this be 
explained? Let it be remembered that S. Paul's conver- 
sion is thrice recorded, once in direct narration and twice 
from his own lips, when pleading before his own country- 
men, and before King Agrippa. If his commission, given 
in person by his Divine Master, were a subordinate one, 
and the real head of the Church on earth were another, 
even S. Peter, and he must be accountable to him, is it not 
passing strange that no hint is given that such was the 
constitution of the Church in the central, fundamental 
principle of its government ? 

Let us look at this subject from another point of view, 
and we shall find the result equally convincing and 
unanswerable as against Modern Rome. It was the boast 
of S. Paul that he was a pioneer in preaching .the Gospel 
and planting the Church. "Yea," he says, "so have I 
strived to preach the Gospel not where^ Christ was named, 
lest I should build upon another man's foundation." 
(Rom. xv, 20.) The Apostle of the Gentiles was the first 
to enter and occupy new regions for his Divine Master 
and His Kingdom on earth. He, therefore, in a spiritual 
sense, takes his place with discoverers and captains who 
serve under orders from a sovereign power, and claim all 



THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 101 

that they find or capture in the name and on the behalf 
of their master who sent them forth to discover or to con- 
quer. We have all the essential elements which make S. 
Paul's case in his relation to Christ and His Church 
exactly parallel to that of Columbus, and Cabot, and 
Henry Hudson among discoverers, and of Scipio, and 
Caesar, and Belisarius, and Marlborough among captains. 
They are alike deputies, acting for another, who sends 
them forth and gives them their supplies. They- are not 
independent ; they are acting under commission and are 
limited by its terms; they are responsible to the sovereign 
power under which they sail, or march, or preach. In 
every case alike, the land discovered, or the province con- 
quered, or the people evangelized, is taken possession of, 
and held, in the name of the constituted authorities at 
home. 

When Columbus touched the soil of the New World he 
raised the flag of Spain and claimed the country in the 
name of Ferdinand and Isabella. When Csesar subdued 
the barbarous tribes of Gaul and Britain he compelled 
them to become tributary to Rome. When S. Paul, there- 
fore, converts the heathen, he is a pioneer, he comes to 
them as the first herald of salvation, and brings them into 
subjection to the Kingdom of Christ on earth. This cer- 
tainly must be the case, and if it be true that S. Paul 
was acting under the orders of S. Peter, how can we 
account for the astounding fact that he never so much as 
even mentions the name of the sovereign pontiff ? never 
in any way, directly or indirectly, so far as the inspired 
history informs us, refers to him in all the conquests which 
he made for Christ ? 



102 WHAT IS 3IODERN ROMANISM f 

If Modern Romanism be the divinely appointed polity 
of the Church, then the ministry of S. Paul, as detailed 
in the Acts of the Holy Apostles, is an enigma as great 
as it would have been had Csesar made his conquest for 
himself and never mentioned the name of Rome ; nay, 
even greater, since we know that Csesar was "ambitious," 
and, as an unregenerated heathen, he might have yielded 
to temptations which swayed him in the sequel, and 
claimed the vanquished provinces as his own lawful prey. 
But S. Paul was, as we all know, beyond the reach of 
any suspicion as to his motives. He gave up all things for 
Christ. What are we to say, then, if it can be proved 
that in all his journeys from Jerusalem to Illyricum, in 
all his labors in bringing the tidings of salvation to new 
races, in all his teaching in sermons, and speeches, and 
conferences, he never, so far as the Holy Ghost informs 
us, even mentions S. Peter, although, as Modern Rome 
teaches, the same Blessed Spieit made S. Peter the 
viceroy of Christ, the sovereign head of the Church on 
earth, and qualified him for his post and work by bestow- 
ing upon him the gift of official infallibility? 

Can this enigma be solved ? We answer, no, it cannot, 
on the assumption that Modern Romanism is true. The 
solution is that Modern Romanism is unscriptural and 
false; that S. Paul and his contemporaries, including S. 
Peter, knew nothing of it. While the last thirteen chap- 
ters of the Acts of the Holy Apostles remain as a part of 
God's Word, they furnish a negative argument against the 
papacy which is absolutely unanswerable. The closing 
scene which the Holy Spirit discloses to us in the final 
chapter of the Acts is a spectacle upon which a Romanist 



THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 103 

of the present clay cannot look without dismay. There 
we see S. Paul in Rome, dwelling in his own hired house, 
in S. Peter's spiritual home, sending for the Jews, S. Peter's 
special charge, reasoning with them and seeking to persuade 
them to accept the Gospel, and yet, so far as we are told, 
absolutely ignoring the head of the Church in his own 
see and among his own people. If S. Peter had been then 
recognized as the Pope to-day is acknowledged, the abso- 
lute monarch of the Christian world, S. Paul would not 
and could not have acted as he did in Asia Minor, and 
Syria, and Palestine, and Macedonia, and Achaia, and 
Athens, and above all, in Rome. 



CHAPTER XV. 



NO MODERN ROMANISM IN THE ACTS OR EPISTLES. 



AS we advance through the Scriptures of the New 
Testament, the negative argument against the 
Divine origin of the polity of Modern Romanism, as 
resting upon the alleged prerogatives of S. Peter, invest- 
ing him with the office of absolute monarch, supreme 
over all persons and estates in the .Church on earth, 
waxes stronger and stronger. It is eminently suspicious, 
as one faces the Roman Catholic theologian, and asks him 
for the proofs in God's Word of the official position which 
S. Peter and his so-called successors hold in his system, 
to be referred exclusively to passages in the Gospels. One 
naturally responds, " When our Lord uttered these words 
which you adduce in support of the claims of S. Peter 
as the head of the Church on earth, the Church, the 
Christian Church over which he was to reign supreme, 
did not exist ; it did not come into being until some time 
afterwards, on the day of Pentecost. Now what I feel to 
be necessary, in order to give your Scriptural argument 
any cogency, is that you should be able to show from 
the post-Gospel Scriptures that when the Church became 
an existing fact, an institution set up on the earth, by 
the hand of God, S. Peter took his place in it, the place 
which our Lord's words described and assigned him, if 
your explanation of their meaning be correct. What I 
crave is that history should interpret prophecy. 



NO MODERN ROMANISM IN ACTS OR EPISTLES. 105 

" Our* Lord's words," you say, " foretell what S. Peter 
would be, what powers he would possess and what juris- 
diction he would exercise in the Church on earth, which 
was shortly to come into existence." The post-Gospel 
Scriptures cover the entire subsequent life of S. Peter and 
reach many years beyond, and yet you adduce no evi- 
dence from these Scriptures to show that either S. Peter 
himself claimed that he possessed such a position, or that 
his contemporaries knew that it was his. It is true that 
you bring forward a number of passages which exhibit S. 
Peter consistently the same to the end, as the first among 
his brethren in action, as he was the first in zeal and 
earnestness ; but all these passages fail to furnish the 
slightest scrap of testimony in favor of S. Peter's alleged 
official supremacy. On the contrary, they make strongly 
the other way, because had S. Peter been, by Divine com- 
mission, the supreme head of the Church, he must have 
known it, and his fellow Apostles, who heard our Loed 
speak, must have known it, and he would not, and he 
could not, in the face of such knowledge possessed by 
himself and others, have sunk his official position, persist- 
ently and consistently, out of sight, have put his supreme 
lordship over the Church, an official gift of trust, aside, 
and continued to be, as of old, before the descent of the 
Holy Ghost, which all admit completed for the Apostles 
their Divine investiture, simply the first among his equals, 
a position due to personal characteristics alone. 

What would we say of the obligations of the Sacra- 
ments, as enduring throughout all time, if the Gospels 
alone made mention of them in their institution by our 
Blessed Lord, and only indirect allusions to them could 



106 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

be found in the subsequent Scriptures, as though they 
were of slight estimation in the minds of the first Chris- 
tians, and were rapidly sinking into oblivion? We 
should conclude, and rightly, too, that the Catholic 
Church throughout the world had erred in assigning the 
Sacraments the place which she has in her system, and 
that heresy and schism, and those who sympathize with 
them, were logical and loyal to God's revealed Will in 
treating the Sacraments as of little or no value, and 
teaching men by example and precept to make light of 
them and ignore them. Nay, our feeling would be that 
the Quakers were probably the nearest to the Divine 
intention, in ceasing altogether to celebrate the Sacra- 
ments. But now, when we are confronted with a mass 
of evidence from the Acts of the Holy Apostles and the 
Epistles, proving incontestably that the first Christians 
and their descendants through Pentecostal times, and 
until the close of the canon of Scripture, regarded the 
Sacraments as of supreme importance, we are convinced 
that the Catholic Church is right and that heresy and 
schism and their friends are wrong. 

And for the same reason, in the opposite direction, 
because we do not discover the slightest proof that the 
Apostles or their contemporaries, or those who survived 
them, interpreted our Lord's words relative to S. Peter 
as Modern Rome does, we must reject her teaching and 
practice in this particular as we do those of other here- 
tics and schismatics, and adhere to the Communion of 
the Catholic Church. 

Suppose, for example, that Rome could adduce, in 
support of her view of what our Saviour meant when 



NO MODERN ROMANISM IN ACTS OR EPISTLES. 107 

He addressed to S. Peter the words, " Thou art Peter and 
on this rock,' 1 etc., " Feed My sheep," etc., passages from 
the Acts and Epistles showing that from the day of Pen- 
tecost and until his death, S. Peter was regarded by his 
contemporaries as holding essentially the same official 
position which the Pope in the system of Modern Rome 
enjoys to-day, what could we say? Suppose she could 
bring forward, as bearing upon S. Peter's alleged claims, 
parallel statements to these touching the sacramental 
system as embodied in the offices of the universal Church : 
" They " (the converts on the day of Pentecost and hence 
the very first believers on Christ) "they continued steadfastly 
in . . the breaking of the bread " (Acts ii, 42). The 
breaking of bread was the daily practice of the believers 
in Pentecostal times (Acts ii, 46). When S. Paul meets 
the brethren at Troas and works his great miracle in the 
restoration of Eutychus to life, the Divine Historian does 
not neglect to tell us that the Apostle "broke bread" 
(Acts xx, 11). Indeed, as it were incidentally, the 
Blessed Spirit just before informs us what the leading- 
service of the first day of the week — or, as we would say, 
Sunday — was at that time ; for He relates as follows : " And 
upon the first da}^ of the week, when the disciples came 
together to break bread" (Acts xx, 7). S. Paul challenges 
an answer to the inquiry, " The cup of blessing which we 
bless, is it not the communion of the Blood of Christ ? 
The bread which we break, is it not the communion of 
the Body of Christ? " (I. Cor. x, 16). 

These are samples of direct, positive testimony as to the 
place which the Holy Eucharist held in the practice of the 
Apostles and those whom they brought up in the nurture 
and admonition of the Lord. Besides this direct evidence 



108 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM ? 

we have a large amount of corroborative testimony which 
is of immense weight in establishing the same conclusion. 
Much of S. Paul's language, in his Epistles, is liturgical, 
and the primitive liturgies, in the matter which is com- 
mon to them all, and therefore undoubtedly Apostolic in 
its origin, are saturated with the phraseology of our 
Loed borrowed from the sixth chapter of S. John. 
Were the Roman Catholic able to produce one single 
passage or fact like these in attestation of S. Peter's 
imaginary prerogatives, he might claim a hearing; but 
his inability to do this, constitutes a negative argument 
against his theory of Church government, which seems 
to us invincible and unanswerable. 

The negative argument grows stronger, we say, as we 
advance in the Scripture narrative, after leaving the 
records of the Acts of the Holy Apostles. S. Paul is 
ordinarily said to be the author of fourteen Epistles. 
Leaving out of account the Epistle to the Hebrews, there 
remain thirteen which are undoubtedly his. Of these, 
four are addressed to individuals, and nine to churches 
or bodies of Christians who were associated together 
under the name of the city, or province, where they 
dwelt, as the Romans or Galatians. 

We have seen that, so far as Holy Scripture informs 
us, S. Paul, in preaching, as a pioneer, to his own country- 
men, and the heathen, the unsearchable riches of Christ, 
makes no mention of S. Peter. He comes, he sees, he 
conquers, in Palestine, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Mac- 
edonia, in Illyricum, in Achaia and in Athens, and yet 
he sends no letter to S. Peter ; he makes no claim for 
him of universal jurisdiction. He acts as, under Christ, 



NO MODERN ROMANISM IN ACTS OR EPISTLES. 109 

supreme himself over all whom he made tributary to- 
the Gospel. 

The brevity of the records of the Acts, perchance it 
may be said, will account for the omission. This ex- 
planation of what seems beyond belief, if Modern Rome's 
claims be true, we by no means allow. We can admit 
that such an omission might have occurred on one oc- 
casion, or two, or three ; but when the Blessed Spirit,. 
Who guided S. Luke to write the narrative, persistently 
leaves out all reference to S. Peter as head of the: 
Church on earth, and whose deputy S. Paul, the promi- 
nent figure in the history, really was, we cannot be 
persuaded that any other reason can be given for the 
silence of the inspired writer than that such claims and 
prerogatives of S. Peter were absolutely unknown in 
Apostolic times. But, for the sake of pushing the argument 
still further in the same direction, let us concede that 
the exceedingly condensed narrative embraced in the 
last thirteen chapters of the Acts, explains the omission 
of all reference to S. Peter on the part of S. Paul, in 
his missionary journeys. 

We come now to the perusal of letters of instruc- 
tion, and exhortation, and counsel, and rebuke, and con- 
solation, addressed by the same S. Paul to the same 
churches, at intervals during a period of more than 
twenty years. May we not anticipate in them direct, 
dogmatic teaching on the headship of S. Peter over the 
entire Church on earth ? If not that, then may we not 
expect some suggestion that his beloved children, whom 
he had begotten in the Lord, should, to avoid the perils 
of heresy and schism which abounded, hear the voice 



110 WHAT 18 MODERN ROMANISM f 

of S. Peter, and adhere with unquestioning obedience to 
his communion? And if not so much as that, may we 
not look for some allusion to S. Peter's prerogatives and 
privileges? No ; our reasonable demands are destined to 
be disappointed. As we pass from letter to letter, we 
fail to find anything of the kind, and we close the series 
of thirteen letters with the conviction that either Modern 
Romanism, as regards S. Peter's position, is untrue, or 
else S. Paul was in absolute ignorance of it, up to the 
moment of his martyrdom. 

Can anything be stronger than this ? Can we imagine 
a Patriarch in the obedience of the Pope, and such, in 
the view of Modern Romanism, was S. Paul, conducting 
missionary enterprises to the heathen, and then, when 
his success was measured by hundreds of converts in 
many different lands, writing to them letters of instruc- 
tion and counsel, and making no allusion whatsoever to 
the claims and prerogatives of the blessed Peter and his 
successors ? Is such a thing conceivable ? Is it possible ? 
Brevity of narrative will not account for this omission, 
if it be omission, as in the case of history, since we are 
dealing now with letters, of which we have the full text 
from the salutation to the conclusion. To us this aspect 
of the negative argument against Rome, is decisive. It 
is simply crushing. 

But as we read these letters of S. Paul, there are 
facts mentioned and statements made which seem, in view 
of what Modern Rome claims to-day for S. Peter, to 
have been set down by the Blessed Spirit for the ex- 
press purpose of refuting the system in its fundamental 
<error. The testimony thus afforded is all the stronger, 



NO MODERN ROMANISM IN ACTS OR EPISTLES. Ill 

because it emerges incidentally. It comes to the sur- 
face now and then in such a way, as to show what was 
the real constitution of affairs, and the normal relation 
of persons and things, when S. Paul was exercising his 
ministry, and S. Peter was alive and administering his 
Apostolic office. 

We proceed to give illustrations of what we mean. 
In the first Epistle to the Corinthians, S. Paul rebukes 
the believers in that city for their schismatical spirit, and 
he makes his charge specific by stating facts. He alleges 
that there were in the Church of Corinth, some who 
claimed to be followers of S. Paul, and others of Apollos, 
and others still of Cephas or Peter (I. Cor. L, 12). Now 
if it were true that S. Peter was in the place of Christ, 
head of the Church on earth, then to be of Cephas was 
to occupy the right position, to be in communion with 
the Catholic Church. Can a Roman Catholic censure 
his brother to-day because he alleges, "I am of Cephas' 
successor?" Then why should S. Paul blame a Cor- 
inthian Christian for claiming to be of Cephas himself? 
Simply because, we answer, neither Cephas nor S. Paul 
in their day, knew anything about these prerogatives and 
privileges of the Pope, which are an invention of a later age. 

Again, in his Epistle to the Galatians, S. Paul tells us 
(Gal. ii., 11-21) that he withstood Peter to the face, be- 
cause he deserved to be blamed, and rebuked him 
sharply in the presence of the whole Church at Antioch. 
The point in dispute was of crucial importance ; it in- 
volved both doctrine and practice — the question, namely, 
whether the Gentiles must first be circumcised before 
they were baptized, and keep the ceremonial law, or not. 



112 WHAT IS MODERN ROMAN ISM f 

S. Peter was guilty of dissimulation. He was seeking 
to occupy two opposite positions at the same time, and 
be on both sides of the question at once. For this 
weakness, if not worse fault, he is publicly called to ac- 
count by S. Paul, and severely rebuked and condemned. 
It is a maxim of Romanism, formulated among the 
dicta of S. Gregory VII, that " the Pope is above all 
and judges all, but is judged by none." How is it, then, 
that the blessed Peter, to whom our Lord spake, goes 
wrong in the sphere of faith and morals, and is exposed, and 
rebuked, and judged, and condemned, by an inferior? 
The Holy Ghost answers, " I caused the incident to be 
preserved in the sacred Scriptures that it might serve its 
purpose in the ages to come, and stand as a perpetual 
refutation of the central root error, which I knew would 
be developed infa later age in the Western Patriarchate, 
under the names of the supremacy and the infallibility of 
the Pope." 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS AND THE EPISTLES OF S. PETER. 



THE negative argument against Modern Romanism 
culminates in the Epistle of S. Paul to the Romans 
and the Epistles of S. Peter himself. Id order to appre- 
ciate the position adequately, we must remind ourselves 
of a few facts, and state what Rome claims as regards S. 
Peter's relations to the Church in the imperial city, and 
the consequences which are drawn from this supposed 
connection. 

The Epistle to the Romans was written at a date not 
earlier than 55 A. D., probably two or three years later. 
S. Paul had not yet visited Rome in person, but promised 
that he would do so at some subsequent time not far 
distant, and impart to his brethren there some spiritual 
gift (Romans i., 11). The subject matter of the Epistle 
is doctrinal beyond any other of the great Apostle's 
writings. If ever he speaks with authority and appears 
in the character of one exercising jurisdiction in the 
sphere of faith and morals, it is in this letter to the 
Roman Church. Its relative importance, as compared 
with the other Scriptures of the New Testament, in deter- 
mining dogma, is shown by the immense mass of litera- 
ture, controversial and explanatory, to which it has given 
birth in the Christian Church. The personal element 
of friendship and intimacy with individuals on social 



114 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

and spiritual grounds, is a striking characteristic of this 
Epistle, and it closes with numerous salutations and 
many incidental reminiscences of a private nature be- 
tween the writer and his friends, which are exceedingly- 
interesting. To sum up, this letter to the Romans is 
universally allowed to occupy the first place among the 
writings of S. Paul. It is called his "palmary Epistle." 

The Church of Rome to-day claims that S. Peter had 
visited Rome long before S. Paul wrote his Epistle to 
the Romans ; that he had founded the Church there 
and was its first Bishop, or rather the first Pope ; that 
he held the papacy for about the space of five and 
twenty years, and was martyred outside the gates with 
S. Paul on the same day. We are in no way con- 
cerned as to the truth of these allegations. They pre- 
sent the basis on which Modern Romanism rests as a 
system, an absolute monarchy, unlimited in the exer- 
cise of its jurisdiction from beneath, and claiming uni- 
versal dominion over the whole earth. They tell us, 
these allegations do, that S. Peter was at Rome in his 
day as Leo XIII. is in ours, the sovereign pontiff, su- 
preme over all estates in the Church of God ; that 
whether present or absent in person, for the space of a 
quarter of a century, he was the sole ruler, under Christ, 
over all believers, and to whom all owed obedience. 

We are perfectly willing to admit that S. Peter visited 
Rome. The voice of antiquity seems to prove as much. 
Indeed, we are inclined to think that he paid two visits 
at least to Rome — one at the time of the martyrdom of 
S. James, and the other about twenty -five years after- 
wards, when he met his death by crucifixion in the reign 



EPISTLE TO ROMANS AND S. PETER. 115 

of Nero ; and perhaps the interval bounded by these two 
visits, gave rise to the notion of an episcopate of a quarter 
of a century, which period it was for centuries asserted no 
subsequent Pope could exceed in the exercise of his office, 
until Pius IX. broke the spell and sat as Pope for thirty 
years. All this we are ready to admit in reference to 
S. Peter, and it is perfectly consistent with his Apostolic 
character, and is in harmony with Holy Scripture and 
ecclesiastical history. No logical or other consequence 
follows from the presence of S. Peter, once or twice, or 
many times in the imperial city which lends the slightest 
support to Modern Romanism, which asserts that . he was 
sovereign pontiff there and from this, his see, ruled the 
earth. For this claim there is not the slightest positive 
proof, and against it there is the cumulative negative 
evidence, which reaches its highest point in the Epistle 
of S. Paul to the Romans. 

In order to feel its force, we must put ourselves in 
the position of a Roman Catholic of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. He is taught, by alleged infallible authority, that 
S. Peter founded the Holy Roman Church, that he was 
its head, as well as the head of Christendom, for twenty- 
five years, that during this period absolute obedience was 
due to him, and the highest reverence and respect as 
vicar of Christ. 

It is a principle of canon law of universal obligation, 
recognized by the Roman Catholic, no less than by others, 
that no Bishop may intrude into the jurisdiction of an- 
other by official act of any kind, without his express 
consent previously obtained. If such intrusion be not 
allowed in the case of equals, much less could it be per- 



116 WHAT 18 MODERN ROMANISM % 

mitted on the part of an inferior towards a superior, and 
it would seem to be in the last degree improbable in 
reference to the Pope, and of all Popes the first, S. Peter, 
who received his commission directly from Christ Him- 
self. 

While the Modern Roman Catholic is taught that S. 
Peter was head over all in the Church, and that every 
ecclesiastic must keep in his own assigned place, and pay 
obedience and respect to his superiors, and most of all 
to the Pope, he is confronted by S. Paul's Epistle to the 
Romans, a universally acknowledged writing of the great 
Apostle and inspired by the Holy Ghost. We may fairly 
demand from him an explanation as to the astounding 
facts which it presents, on the assumption that his theory 
of Church government be true and Scriptural. Here, on 
the one hand, we have, as alleged, S. Peter sitting as the 
Bishop of Rome, exercising actual jurisdiction and ruling 
the entire Church as the universal pontiff; and on the 
other we have a subordinate, S. Paul, intruding into the 
Bishopric of his superior, with an official letter traversing 
the field of faith and morals, entering largely into details 
and giving specific directions on a variety of topics. 
Nay, more and worse, we have this inferior entirely 
ignoring his superior, making no reference to him directly 
or indirectly, and while he sends salutations in abundance 
to many persons, both women and men, he has no word of 
greeting or farewell for his lord and master, his spiritual 
father, the Pope, the Pope of Popes, S. Peter. What can be 
offered as an explanation of this more than extraordinary 
display of wanton, deliberate insubordination, contempt 
and insult on the part of the discreet, modest, humble, 



EPISTLE TO ROMANS AND S. PETER. 117 

courteous S. Paul, for he was all this, towards his spiritual 
superior, S. Peter, if Modern Romanism be true? 

It may be said that S. Peter at this time was absent 
from Rome, and consequently S. Paul ignores him. 
Probably the fact, as alleged, is true, but does that re- 
move the difficulty? By no means; rather it would 
make matters worse, since it would reflect seriously upon 
the moral character of S. Paul, to suppose that he took 
■advantage of the temporary absence of S. Peter to intrude 
into his jurisdiction and assert himself as the teacher, 
the administrator, and the Apostle in the place of one who 
w r as over him in the Lord. No one who has any respect 
for the noble Apostle of the Gentiles can for a moment 
impute to him the meanness, the unworthy motives, 
which such a supposition suggests. 

Again, it may be said that S. Paul was, with S. Peter, 
a joint founder of the Church of Rome, and, consequently, 
he writes as one having coordinate authorny with the 
prince of the Apostles, in this relation to the believers 
whom he addresses. But this attempted explanation, be 
it observed, in the first place cuts the ground from under 
the feet of the advocate of Modern Romanism, since the 
whole structure rests upon the assumption that S. Peter 
was the sole founder of the Church of Rome and the first 
Pope, from whom all his successors derive their privileges 
and powers. We might more easily imagine a joint Pope 
sitting with Pius IX. or Leo XIII. than suppose S. Paul 
side by side with S. Peter, exercising jurisdiction in 
writing official letters and imparting spiritual gifts, while 
the latter was the absolute head of the Church on earth 
by Divine appointment. In the second place, the sug- 



118 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

gestion will not serve its purpose, because it introduces 
into the polity of the Church a principle which all good 
government, not to say Catholicism, abhors; namely, a 
division of supreme power between two rulers — a biceph- 
alous monster. " One Bishop to one city " is the universal 
rule of Christendom, and consequently, to admit that S. 
Paul exercised coordinate jurisdiction with S. Peter over 
the Church of Rome not only fails to explain the absence 
of all reference to S. Peter in the Epistle of S. Paul to the 
Romans, but is absolutely inconsistent with the theory of 
Modern Romanism, and suggests a principle of action 
repudiated alike by civil and ecclesiastical law, by human 
and Divine government. 

The only solution of the difficulty is to dismiss Modern 
Romanism as a usurpation, and an imposture which has 
grown up in the course of centuries, and fall back upon 
Catholicism, the polity instituted by Christ himself on 
the Mount of Ascension, when He gave the eleven coor- 
dinate jurisdiction under Him,* as the one sole Head over 
all the world and through all time ; the polity invested by 
the Holy Ghost with living power on the day of Pente- 
cost, when the Blessed Spirit descended and qualified the 
Apostles for their work ; the polity which has the promise 
and pledge of perpetuity from the Divine Lord, when He 
gave His Word that the gates of hell should never prevail 
against His Church. 

Catholicism recognizes S. Peter as the first of the Apos- 
tles, but still as an Apostle on a level with his brethren, 
as having jurisdiction with them, but not over them ; and 
hence S. Paul's silence respecting S. Peter when he writes 

*See illustrations— Frontispiece. 



EPISTLE TO ROMANS AND S. PETER. 119 

to the Church of Koine, needs no explanation whatever ; 
it explains itself. S. Paul had no more reason to refer 
to S. Peter when addressing the Romans, than he had to 
any other Apostle who was not in Rome when he wrote. 
But on the theory now held as of faith by the Church of 
Rome, this Epistle is an enigma, a puzzle which defies 
every effort to solve it and leaves the Roman Catholic in 
hopeless confusion in the difficulties which it creates. 

If S. Paul thus ignores S. Peter when writing to S. 
Peter's own Church, where, as alleged, he reigned as 
sovereign pontiff for a quarter of a century, we may expect 
that S. Peter, in case he writes to the believers in any 
quarter of the world, will assert his position as universal 
Bishop, and claim the obedience which is his due and 
which it is a sin to withhold. But what shall we say if 
we find that S. Peter does send not one, but two circular 
letters, which are included in the canon of Scriptures, and 
in them not only does not assert his legitimate position, 
as alleged by Modern Romanism, but does not intimate 
that he is anything more than a simple Apostle ? He 
ignores not only all his privileges, but his office as the 
teacher and ruler of Christendom, and that, too, when it 
would seem to be necessary to give weight to his instruc- 
tions and warnings. 

S. John, it is true, calls himself " the elder" but he is 
elsewhere in Scripture spoken of as an Apostle, and is 
universally acknowledged as such by his contemporaries 
and all succeeding ages, and hence we may ascribe to 
modesty this sinking himself to the level of an inferior 
office by the beloved disciple. . This explanation will not, 
however, serve in the case of S. Peter, since nowhere in 



120 WHAT 18 MODERN ROMANISM t 

Holy Scripture is he presented to us as holding any office 
above an Apostle, nor does ecclesiastical history intimate 
that in the earlier ages anyone ever suspected that he was 
more. In his Epistles, S. Peter calls himself an Apostle, 
and this is claiming, so far as we know, the highest official 
dignity to which he was entitled. The Roman Catholic 
asserts that S. Peter was the vicar of Christ and the head 
of the Church on earth, and that when he calls himself, 
as he does in these Epistles, simply an Apostle, it shows 
his modesty and humility in thus ignoring his true posi- 
tion. We can show from God's Word that S. John was an 
Apostle of Jesus Christ, and hence when he styles him- 
self "the elder," we are prepared to admit that his doing 
so may indicate his modesty. When the Roman Catholic 
can prove by the authority of the New Testament that S. 
Peter held an office superior to the Apostolate, we shall be 
equally ready to admit that when S. Peter uses the desig- 
nation "Apostle" in reference to himself, he displays his 
humility, but not until this is done can we allow the pro- 
posed explanation to stand. 

The two Epistles of S. Peter, therefore, taken in connec- 
tion with those of S. Paul, and especially his Epistle to 
the Romans, show that so far as their testimony goes, 
neither of these Apostles had the most distant idea of the 
alleged supreme office in the Church on earth with 
which S. Peter had been invested by his Divine Master. 
They show still further that each acted on his own 
lines, steadily, continually, and consistently, in a manner 
absolutely irreconcilable with the known existence of 
such supremacy. This is the more remarkable, in view 
of the fact that S. Paul had been the guest of S. Peter at 



EPISTLE TO ROMANS AND S. PETER. 121 

Jerusalem, for the space of fifteen days at the outset of his 
ministry (Gal. i., 18), and we may reasonably suppose that 
S. Peter, in giving his younger brother the benefit of his 
experience, and knowledge, and counsel, as a preparation 
for the great missionary work upon which he was about 
to enter, would not leave out of his instructions, as Modern 
Romanism holds, the fundamental principle of Church 
government established by Christ Himself in his person 
and in his hearing ; a principle upon which everything 
else ultimately turned, since it involved the source on 
earth of the grace of orders, and through them, of the sac- 
raments, of jurisdiction and of discipline. It is inconceiv- 
able that S. Peter, in his conference for a fortnight with S. 
Paul, should have ignored what any Roman Catholic of 
the present day would speak of first and before all else, 
the supremacy of the prince of the Apostles and the 
unity which flows from his headship. 

On the assumption that S. Peter made known to S. Paul 
the principles of Church government as summed up in 
Modern Romanism, how can we explain the letters of S. 
Paul, and above all, his letters to the Romans, which not 
only ignore entirely the Petrine supremacy, but are utterly 
inconsistent with it? How are we to explain S. Peter's 
letters, which equally with S. Paul's Epistles, ignore his 
own headship over the Church, of which, if he possessed 
it, he must have known, since, as the Roman Catholic 
affirms, Christ gave him this place when He said, " Thou 
art Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church, and 
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it ? " Would it 
be possible in the Roman obedience to-day, for the Arch- 
bishop, say, of New York, to write an official letter, giving 



122 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

instruction in faith and morals, to the Church of Rome, 
and salute many of the faithful in the holy city, while the 
papal chair was filled, and absolutely ignore the Pope? 
If Modern Romanism be true, S. Paul did this. Would 
it be possible for a Pope since the time of Gregory VII. 
to write an encyclical letter or letters to his children 
scattered abroad in the midst of this naughty world, and 
sink his office, which would give point to his instructions 
and admonitions, sink it entirely out of sight ? If Modern 
Romanism be true, S. Peter did this. 

We ask the Roman Catholic to answer these questions ; 
and if he says that it would not be possible, then we ask 
him how it was possible for S. Paul, who takes the place 
of the supposed Archbishop, and S. Peter, who more than 
represents the present Pope, because he stands next to 
our Lord, how it was possible for them, S. Peter and S. 
Paul, to do these very things which it is impossible for 
their successors in office to do to-dav ? 



CHAPTER XVII. 



S. JOHN NO MODERN ROMANIST. 



WITH S. John, the testimony of Holy Scripture, as 
bearing upon the polity and form of government 
of Christ's Church on earth, is closed. He is the last wit- 
ness. He is unique, too, in his relation to the question 
under discussion. He speaks not only of the past, and of 
the present which was before him in his extreme old age, 
in the one hundreth year of our era, but he looks into the 
future and, as inspired by the Holy Ghost, he presents 
in prophetic vision to our view, the Church triumphant 
in Heaven. We have not only his Gospel and his Epis- 
tles, but also his Apocalypse. He carries us back into 
the infinite past in his Gospel, when he declares " In the 
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 
and the Word was God ;". and he bears us onward into 
the infinite future, when in his Revelation he describes the 
new Jerusalem, as it shall be when time shall be no more, 
and all the redeemed shall be gathered within its walls. 
He sweeps through eternity, if we may so say, in his nar- 
ratives, and testifies in the most emphatic manner as to 
the true character of the Head of the Church, Jesus 
Christ our Lord, and with equal clearness he sets before 
us the true character of His Body, the Church of the 
Living God. 

This is as we might have expected. Could any one 



124 WHAT 18 MODERN ROMANISM % 

with reason suppose or anticipate that God would arrange 
a dispensation for man, and call it by definite names, and 
not disclose its essential principles ? As well might they 
suppose that God would send His Son into the world in 
disguise, and give no clue to enable anyone to discover 
who He really is, His personality, His nature and His 
offices. God did send our Blessed Lord into the world in 
disguise, but He assigned to S. John, in preference to all 
others, the special duty of making known to mankind the 
Godhead of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union with His 
human nature. On the same plane with the Head God 
has placed His Church, a Divine institution in disguise, cov- 
ered with human and material habiliments in officers 
taken from among men, and spiritual gifts hidden be- 
neath outward signs ; and he left it to S. John, with the 
other inspired writers of the New Testament, to reveal the 
true character of His Church, the Body, as He did in the 
case of His Eternal Son, the Head. 

As is the Head, so must the Body be. The laws which 
govern them both must be the same, the conditions which 
environ them both must be alike ; and so they are as 
Scripture discloses them. The Head, while upon earth 
appeared as a Man among men, using outward means to 
work His wonders, and submitting to all the vicissitudes 
and experiences of time and sense, which could possibly 
render His disguise perfect. Bethlehem began the shroud- 
ing of His glory, and on Calvary, it was completed. The 
Infant in Its mother's arms seemed far removed from the 
mighty God, but farther still, as far as possible, appeared 
the Victim on the Cross. The New Testament writers* 
however, and pre-eminently S. John, enable us to pen- 



5. JOHN NO MODERN ROMANIST. 125 

etrate the disguise, and recognize the Lamb of God at His 
birth and the eternal Word at His death. Would it not 
have been strange had this not been so ? Can we believe 
that it could have been possible for God to have left us 
in perplexity as to the real character of the Head of His 
Church ? 

Would it not be equally strange and repugnant to rea- 
son, to suppose that God would close His Book of Revela- 
tion, and leave the true character of the Body, the Church. 
itself, in doubt, so that no one could say where it is,' or 
what it is? There are those who would fain have us 
believe that this is actually the case ; that Revelation is 
clear as to the criteria which determine the position of 
the Head, fix His personality, His two natures, His three 
Offices, but leave the Body in absolute uncertainty, giving 
no hint as to its structure, its functions and the laws of 
its life. Let those credit this who can. To us, it seems so 
near an approach to what is contrary to right reason, that 
we forbear to characterize it. A visible Head, an invisi- 
ble Body ; a Head presented to mankind with clearly 
defined features, a Body without any distinctive polity or 
government ; a Head the same yesterday, to-day and for- 
ever, a Body that is always changing ! Nature refuses 
such a monstrosity; can grace tolerate it? There are 
those who think so. 

Here, as in many other things touching faith and mor- 
als, the Roman Catholic and the sectarian of modern 
times, draw very close to each other, and take essentially 
the same position. Both alike insist that while their 
systems are sustained by Scripture, they are not clearly 
revealed in its pages, except in the most general way, leav- 

9 



126 WHAT IS 3I0DERN ROMANISM f 

ing time to develop the details, or else to show that there 
are no details of Divine appointment, and that all or nearly 
all is committed to man to shape and form as he may 
deem wisest and best. The Romanist, from his standpoint, 
asserts that from the first, our Lord constituted S. Peter 
the head of the Church, in His place, on earth ; but, as a 
matter of fact, S. Peter's prerogatives and privileges in 
their fulness, were not denned and enjoined as articles of 
faith until more than eighteen centuries after he was dead. 
The sectarian, from his point of view, affirms that his 
system revived the Gospel in the sixteenth century, which 
had virtually been dead and buried almost from the 
beginning, and that his special reformer, be he who he 
may, is an authority second, if not equal, to all the Apos- 
tles combined, and that only then, when Luther, or Cal- 
vin, or Zwingli, or Wesley, or Fox spoke, was the truth 
made known, and the Church emerged from the obscurity 
which had covered her since the first age, to be recognized 
as having a definite or a variable form, or none at all, 
according as he takes the position of the Lutheran, or 
Presbyterian, or Congregationalism or Quaker. 

In both cases alike, it will be seen that what is called 
orthodox Protestantism, and Modern Romanism, virtually 
affirm that while Holy Scripture leaves us in no doubt as 
to the true character of the Head, it does not define with 
any approach to clearness, the real nature of the Body ; 
that, in consequence, during much the greater part of the 
time which has elapsed since the day of Pentecost, Chris- 
tians have been either entirely mistaken as to the consti- 
tution and polity of the Church, or else, with the first 
general principle only in possession, have been struggling 



8. JOHN NO MODERN ROMANIST. 127 

to develop and apply it until the present age, when papal 
infallibility is denned, proclaimed and enjoined as of 
faith, and crowns their efforts with success. 

In the case of Protestanism, the discovery is made in 
the sixteenth century, that the Body of Christ, the 
Church, has no distinct visible organization authorized 
by God, and that, in consequence, it can have no official 
ministry, and no sacraments, and holy rites which convey 
grace ; that it is, in effect, for it must come to this, a vol- 
untary religious association of persons who think alike, 
and agree to act together with a view to mutual edifica- 
tion and spiritual culture. With the Roman Catholic, 
the nineteenth century at length enables him to see the 
Church, the Body of Christ, for the first time in all the 
ages, in her true character and her fully developed form. 
The Vatican decrees of 1870 enlarge the area of faith for 
the Roman obedience, with the addition to its beliefs that 
the Church is an absolute monarchy, under an infallible 
human sovereign, unlimited from beneath and scarcely, if 
at all, limited from above, the successor of S. Peter, the 
vicar of Christ, the spiritual lord of the whole world. 

Confronting these systems, which are alike the product 
of ages far removed from Christ and His Apostles, stands 
S. John, appointed by his Divine Master to tarry as the 
last inspired witness, and complete the testimony of Rev- 
elation. His Gospel supplements the three which had 
gone before, and presents Him Who is " the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life " as the eternal Word, taking unto 
Himself the attributes of infinite condescension and hu- 
miliation, and adding them to the glories of the Godhead. 
His Epistles, from the standpoint of actual observation 



128 WHAT IS MODERN R0MANIS3I f 

and experience, refute the heresies which assailed the 
Incarnation ; and his Apocalypse bears the messages of the 
Blessed Spirit to the Churches, and reveals the Bride of 
the Lamb as she will be in her everlasting triumph in 
Heaven. 

If there had been any thing left out in the first three 
Gospels in our Lord's teaching as regards the organiza- 
tion and polity of the Church, which God desired us to 
know, we may be sure that it would have been supplied 
by S. John's Gospel, as we find in its pages the discourses 
of Jesus on the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. 
The absence of any such addition, is conclusive evidence 
that in the Divine mind no more information was needed, 
and that the preceding Gospels furnish all the instruc- 
tion from the lips of Christ, touching His Church, which 
it was necessary for mankind to receive and preserve. 
S. John's silence, therefore, in reference to the relative 
position of the Apostles, shuts us up to the conviction 
that the Blessed Spirit meant us to distinctly under- 
stand, that they were forever to remain where S. Matthew, 
S. Mark, and S. Luke, leave them, officially on a level. This 
conclusion is emphasized by the fact that S. John does 
make S. Peter prominent in the last chapter of his Gos- 
pel, but his purpose is not to elevate him above his peers, 
but to inform us that he was restored to his place of 
equality with his fellows, from which he had fallen by 
his lamentable denials of his Lord. There the last of 
the Evangelists leaves the rash, impetuous Peter, rein- 
stated, it is true, by his Divine Master in his Apostle- 
ship, but with the shadow of that thrice-repeated disloy- 
alty resting upon him. 



8. JOHN NO MODERN ROMANIST. 129 

The Epistles of S. John, by universal consent, were writ- 
ten near the close of the first century, when the Apostle 
was very old. They are full of warnings against present 
evils and impending dangers. They supply criteria to test 
the truth, and recommend antidotes to drive out and cure 
error. They are a chart to guide the true believer along 
the pathway of faith to the haven of rest, and peace, and 
love. In view of their purpose and scope, we can scarcely 
conceive it possible that the Holy Spirit would have suf- 
fered His final witness to forbear to testify in these Epis- 
tles, to the value of S. Peter's chair as the divinely 
appointed safeguard against Antichrist, had the system of 
Modern Papal Rome been the ecclesiastical polity ordained 
by God. The devil, as the Apostle testifies, was rampant, 
and exhortation, warning, advice, instruction, were needed, 
and hence he writes ; but if the papacy be the true polity 
of the Church, then S. John would seem to be sadly at 
fault, since he omits to point out the one thing which 
above all others the believer needed to know. 

The beloved disciple who leaned on Jesus' breast, who 
knew S. Peter well and had been his constant companion 
during the years which immediately succeeded Pentecost, 
seems even in his extreme old age, to know nothing of the 
alleged supremacy of S. Peter, of his reigning in the see 
of Rome through all time in the persons of his successors 
as the vicar of Christ, the voice of the Church, the expo- 
nent of the faith and the divinely appointed centre of 
unity ; for surely had he known all this, he would not and 
he could not have kept silence about it, since the occasion 
demanded that he should have insisted in the most 
emphatic way, upon the absolute necessity of recognizing 



130 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM % 

the claims and authority of S. Peter, in order to remain in 
the communion of the Church and retain the favor of Goi>. 

If the theory of Modern Romanism be true, how are 
we to explain the fact that S. John, who, as the last wit- 
ness in point of time of the inspired writers, faces the 
coming ages, does not give them the advice which they 
need above and beyond all else, " Cling to the chair of S. 
Peter," and utter the warning which they can never afford 
to forget or ignore, " Beware of breaking with Rome ; in 
her communion is safety, out of it is ruin ? " It is quite 
out of our power to do so. S. John comes after all the 
other inspired witnesses ; he tarries, as his Lord had 
appointed him ; he looks upon the Church when the hun- 
dreth year had come, and heresies had sprung up, and 
persecutions had again and again visited the flock, and 
evils, multiplied and various, were coming in like a flood. 
He stands, as God's sentinel, God's messenger, facing the 
great future, and we may be sure that he omits to 
name S. Peter and Rome as the root elements of the 
Church of God, the ark of safety, simply because they are 
not. His message goes as far as God permitted, as far as 
truth would allow, and hence it does not include what 
Modern Rome, without the warrant of Holy Scripture, or 
of early ecclesiastical history, claims as fundamental veri- 
ties to-day. 

We pass to the Apocalypse, and here we find S. John 
clinching the Scripture argument against Modern Rome 
in a most remarkable and conclusive way. Nothing could 
be more convincing than the impression which he leaves 
upon the mind, as he closes the oracles of Revelation with 
the vision of the New Jerusalem, which he is permitted 



S. JOHN NO MODERN ROMANIST. 131 

to sketch for us under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, 
This brings out into bold relief the salient features of the 
Church, in her glorified and eternal condition in Heaven. 
As a preparation for such a disclosure, we have the epis- 
tles, as they are called, bearing the messages of the Holy 
Spirit to the seven Churches. We are not concerned now 
with the question, what is the true interpretation and 
meaning of these marvellous letters? Let them mean 
what they may and be pressed into any scheme of inter- 
pretation one pleases ; the point which we wish to make 
and insist upon is not in consequence affected thereby in 
the slightest degree. Our object is to draw attention to, 
to rivet attention upon, what they omit to teach, the 
system, namely, of Modern Rome. 

The Blessed Spirit does recognize seven times over, 
organization and polity of some kind in the seven 
Churches which he addresses. We will not now assert 
that it is episcopacy, although we are convinced that it is ; 
but we do assert that it is not Modern Romanism, with its 
one head on earth, the Pope. There is no room here for 
suggesting any explanation, arising out of ignorance or 
expediency, to account for the omission, since it is the 
Blessed Spirit Himself Who speaks, and in view of the 
causes which led Him to send His message, and the ob- 
ject which He sought to accomplish, it is to us simply 
inconceivable, if the Holy Ghost had already endowed 
S. Peter with the precious gift of infallibility in the 
sphere of faith and morals, that He should not have added 
in every case, ere he closed with the solemn admonition, 
" He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith 
unto the Churches, " words like these : " Look to the rock 



132 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM ? 

on which you rest as the only sure foundation ; cling to 
the blessed Peter and his successors as representing Me 
and revealing My will, and sustaining all with My 
strength." 

Such, or at least some, reference to the supreme vicar 
of Christ and mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost, must have 
found a place in these communications direct from God 
to the seven Churches, had the claims of the papacy rested 
upon Divine authority. No shadow, no distant hint of 
Rome appears in these solemn messages from first to last. 
Politically, Rome was known to all these cities. Had 
Peter, or Clement, or Linus, or Cletus been the spiritual 
monarch of the earth, mightier than the Caesar, surely now 
was the time, and here was the place, for the Holy Ghost 
to recognize and endorse His oracle among mankind, as 
inspired by Him and guarded by His protection from 
lapsing into error. Surely the see of S. Peter was the 
panacea which the Churches needed if she be what is now 
pretended, incapable of going wrong herself, and the 
guardian of all who confide in her against error in religion 
and corruption in morals. 

The absence, complete and absolute, of Modern Roman- 
ism from the messages of the Blessed Spirit to the seven 
Churches, prepares us to look upon the Church triumph- 
ant, as she will be throughout eternity, in Heaven. We 
shall not be so disappointed, as otherwise we might have 
been, in not finding S. Peter, with his triple crown, seated 
on his lonely throne, above the eleven, ruling the Church as 
the sole vicar of Christ. The epistles to the seven 
Churches, in the purport and scope of their messages, 
reach onward through time to eternity. They recognize 



S. JOHN NO MODERN ROMANIST. 133 

an equality in ecclesiastical government, be that govern- 
ment what it may. It is true, Rome is not addressed, but 
had she been supreme, or in the Divine counsels was to 
be supreme, in the near or distant future, then her suprem- 
acy would have been, must have been, pressed as the 
shelter of the Church from the dangers and the woes 
which it must ever be her lot to encounter while she 
remains militant on earth. 

The equality under Christ, the Lamb of God, thus 
runs on from Ephesus, and Smyrna, and Pergamos, and 
Thyatira, and Sardis, and Philadelphia, and Laodicea, 
through the ages to the Apostles, on the same level, with 
their names in the twelve foundations of the New Jerusa- 
lem, the eternal city, the Church triumphant. The in- 
equality which Modern Rome requires as the funda- 
mental and central root principle of ecclesiastical govern- 
ment in the supremacy of S. Peter, nowhere appears in 
the economy of the Church in Heaven, as represented by 
the Holy Ghost to our view in the 21st chapter of the 
Apocalypse. It might have been urged by the advocate 
of the papacy, that this is so because the organization of 
time and sense is done away in the celestial hierarchy, 
presided over by the King Immortal in person ; but now 
he is anticipated in the use of such an argument, by the 
remarkable fact that, brief as the description is, it brings 
into view, as preserved in the structure of the Church in 
Heaven, the characteristics of the Jewish and the Chris- 
tian dispensations. There we see the twelve gates with 
the names of the twelve tribes of the childern of Israel, 
and the twelve foundations, and in them the names of the 
twelve Apostles of the Lamb. 



134 WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM f 

If the equality of the Apostolate and of the Episcopate 
under Christ, be the divinely appointed organization of 
the Church, then all is clear and consistent, and Holy 
Scripture affirms the rule in the Gospels, and the Acts, and 
the Epistles, and seals it with the seal of eternity when the 
Revelation of S. John, the Divine, shows it to us engraven 
in the everlasting foundations of the New Jerusalem, whose 
Maker and Builder is God. But if Modern Romanism be 
the true polity of the Church, if S. Peter be above all and 
alone in his order, and prerogatives, and privileges as the 
sole vicar of Christ, and monarch on earth under Him, 
then the system is not revealed in Holy Scripture and 
must look elsewhere, as it does, for its certificates to claim 
and bind the obedience of mankind. 

Let us bring into view our Lord, on the one hand, 
while in disguise on earth during His ministry, laying 
down the rule of official equality to His Apostles for 
time and eternity ; and on the other those Apostles, in- 
cluding S. Peter, established forever in their equality of 
honor and glory in Heaven, and leave Modern Rome to 
do her best to prevail against the prophecy of our Lord 
and its fulfilment, as witnessed by S. John. The Divine 
Master, ere the Church was born at Pentecost, and the 
beloved disciple, after her career on earth and in Para- 
dise is ended, and she is at home in Heaven, unite in 
testifying to the equality of the Apostolate and conclude 
the case as against Rome, with her absolute monarchy 
vested in S. Peter and his successors. 

Jesus said unto His disciples, a Ye are they which have 
continued with Me in My temptations. And I appoint 
unto you a Kingdom as My Father hath appointed unto 
Me, that ye may eat and drink at My table in My King- 



S. JOHN NO MODERN ROMANIST. 135 

dom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of 
Israel" (S. Luke xxii., 28-30). u And there came unto 
me one of the seven angels, which had the seven vials full 
of the seven last plagues, and talked with me saying, 
Come hither, I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's 
Wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great 
and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the 
Holy Jerusalem, descending out of Heaven from God. . . 
And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in 
them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb " 
(Rev. xxi., 9, 10, 14). Here we have the promise and the 
prophecy of Jesus, and the principle of equality is clear \ 
there can be no mistake. It is equality in the exercise of 
jurisdiction jointly, for while the Kingdom is one, the 
thrones are twelve. Here we have the promise and pro- 
phecy fulfilled in Heaven, and the principle of equality is 
displayed with the same, if not greater clearness and 
emphasis, since again the city is one, yet the foundations 
are twelve and the names are in them. Imagination can 
conceive a monarch leaving his seat, and can picture a 
vacant throne ; but it cannot readily adapt itself to the 
conception of foundations with names cut into them, losing 
their engraved signatures, and still remaining foundations, 
unmoved and unshaken. 

Here Holy Scripture leaves us, and we may rest content. 
S. John places the telescope of prophecy to our eye and 
we see Heaven opened, and the Church in her eternal 
home, resting, not upon S. Peter as the sole foundation, 
as Modern Rome would fain have us believe, but on the 
twelve Apostles as twelve foundations in coordination, 
built upon Christ, the eternal Corner Stone, as the Catholic 
Church teaches and has ever taught. 



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